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Indiana Museums - Aviation, Military, Automotive and Fire

The Stutz Car Museum
Indianapolis, IN
Date Visited:  3-15-2025

This museum is located at the former Stutz car factory at the intersection of Capital Avenue and 10th Street in Indianapolis, IN.  The museum has limited hours but is free to the public.  When I visited the museum, there were ten vehicles on display.  Six of them were Stutz's which were built in the factory complex in which they are now displayed. 

The vehicles in the museum are from the Turner Woodward collection.

The word Stutz and Bearcat just naturally go together.  This is one of only 15 that are known to still exist. 

This photo is looking back towards the entrance to the museum.

Six of the vehicles were on display in this area.

This 1926 Speedster was later modified into the classic looking hot rod.

This 1929 Stutz Dual Cowl Phaeton had a 185 hp straight eight engine.

The engine in the Phaeton is similar to this one on display. 

Stutz also made fire engines.  This is number 22 in a series of 25 that were purchased by the Indianapolis Fire Department in the early 1920s to replace its horse drawn fire equipment.  This is actually one of two pumpers and a hook and ladder built by Stutz on display in Indianapolis.  The other pumper and hook and ladder are at the Indianapolis Fire Department Museum.

This 1933 DV32 Stutz Hollywood was one of the fastest production cars of its era with an advertised top speed of over 100 mph.  It had a limited production of 200 before the company went out of business.

Does this 1927 Stutz Safety 8 look like a stock car champion?  Every stock car race in which a Safety 8 was entered, it won.  It was eventually named as the world champion.

I had never seen anything quite like this in my years of visiting automobile museums. This is a 1973 Stutz Blackhawk.  The company name was purchased by a group of businessmen, and this is one of 500 Blackhawks that were built in Italy from 1971 through 1987.  Interestingly enough, the chassis was based on a Pontiac Bonneville chassis.

Elvis Presley was the first owner of this type of vehicle.  He eventually owned four of them. He was one of many celebrities that purchased the vehicle.

Imagine Elvis sitting in the leather driver's seat tooling around Memphis, TN.  Or think about Johnny Cash taking June Carter out to dinner in Nashville, TN.  Or maybe in southern California Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Marin all arriving for dinner together in each of their own Stutz Blackhawks. 

As noted above, the Stutz factory still exists 90 years after it stopped making automobiles and has been repurposed into a museum and commercial and retail space.  This is the building where the car museum is located. 

This three story factory building across the street from the car museum was also part of the Stutz factory complex.

This is the former main Stutz factory building on Capital Avenue in Indianapolis, IN.