Insider's View of the British Car Museum with Ian Hope

by Paul Sweeney.

I recently rediscovered some video clips I filmed 7 or 8 years ago with Ian Hope, owner of the British Car Museum near Napier, New Zealand. Ian and I were friends and I helped him with the online presence for his museum, photography and other bits and pieces. He hated writing things down, so he asked me to film him talking about his museum so that some information would be there after he'd passed on.

Ian sadly died in 2019 and since then I havent wanted to revisit these materials, but now feels like the right time. He knew of our club and was interested - even exchanging messages with Daniel Bysouth, who very generously sent Ian the gift of a period RAC badge Dan had. Ian was thrilled and straight away fitted the badge to one of his favourite cars, his Alvis TC21. I took a photo of Ian proudly pointing to it for Daniel to see, and that photo is included in this video.

I started looking through the video clips I have and soon realised that if I used them all, it would make a long video - but equally I didnt want to leave out interesting items. So I decided to split it into 2 videos. This, the first one is an introduction to Ian and his museum and looks at some of the cars in his collection. The next will feature the huge memorabilia collection Ian had on the mezzanine floor of the museum and also lining all of the walls. 

When I first began filming Ian was a  little shy and didn't want to speak on camera, preferring me to do that - but his enthusiasm soon got the better of him and he gradually took over, to my great pleasure. It made so much more sense to me to hear the man himself talking about his passion.

Anyway - here is the first video; I hope you enjoy it. I'm not a professional film editor but I did my best.