The Franklin Auto Museum, Tuscon, Arizona

The Franklin Auto Museum has been called Tucson’s best kept secret. I believe it; I have been to Tucson many times and the museum was news to me. So was the Franklin automobile. I had never heard of either.

Industrialist Herbert H. Franklin owned a die casting company in Syracuse, New York, at the turn of the last century, and in 1901 he entered what promised to be a growing industry: automobile manufacturing. Between 1902 and 1934, Franklin made 153,000 cars (production ended as a result of the Great Depression). Franklin started with a small 4-cylinder car, but ultimately became a maker of large luxury automobiles, competing with Cadillac and other high-end marques. A new Ford Model A in those days was $600; a typical Franklin cost $3,000 with some selling for as much as $6,500. Franklin automobiles had air-cooled engines and an ingenious heat management approach. Franklins incorporated a scirocco (a cyclonic fan) just behind the grill, and a mechanical thermostat adjusted the grill louvers to control airflow and engine cooling. The sciroccos were sized to the engines (larger engines had larger sciroccos) with airflow and consequent cooling capacity matched to engine speed and output. The first Franklins featured 4-cylinder engines; later models had 199-cubic-inch 6-cylinder engines followed by 398-cubic-inch V-12 engines (the V-12 engines used two banks of the 6-cylinder engine sharing a common crankshaft). Imagine that: An air-cooled, 398-cubic-inch V-12! Franklins first had shrouded vertical cooling fins around each cylinder; later models used horizontal cooling fins.

Thomas Hubbard, a successful Tucson engineer and businessman, overcame childhood respiratory ailments by moving to Arizona from New York to live with his aunt in the 1930s. After World War II, the New York Hubbard family moved to Arizona and purchased the estate that now houses the Franklin Auto Museum. The Hubbards were Franklin aficionados; they loved their Franklins and continued to drive them even after Franklin went out of business. Tom Hubbard bought his first Franklin (the first of many) in 1953. He started the Franklin Service Company in 1966 to focus on restoring Franklins. The Franklin Auto Museum has an impressive collection of 21 automobiles. All are in magnificent condition (including a few that are in unrestored, original condition, and one with only 3,000 miles). Approximately 3,700 Franklins survive. The lone motorcycle in the Franklin Auto Museum is an original, unrestored 1913 Thor Model U.

The Franklin Auto Museum is almost hidden in northeast Tucson’s Richland Heights area. The automobiles are displayed in four buildings and the grounds are well within the Tucson city limits, but when the ranch was built in 1925 the estate was far from what was then Tucson. The roads in the Richland Heights area remain unpaved by choice (they are easily navigated with any motorcycle or car, and it is only a mile from paved Prince Road to the museum entrance). The area around the Franklin Auto Museum is desert scrub and it is not likely you would stumble onto this best kept Tucson secret by accident. The museum is well worth a visit, and the two curators (Bourke and Anthony) love sharing their encyclopedic Franklin knowledge. I give the place two thumbs up, and that is only because I don’t have three thumbs. It is that good.