(By Eric Rood) – Bangshift recently brought you an extraordinarily bizarre gallery from the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Barber Motorsports Park and if you’ve been to Barber, you know what a beautiful place is. While I was mostly tied up with working at the race throughout the LeMons weekend, I did steal away an hour Friday morning before the race goings-on to visit the incredible museum on the Barber grounds.

To be quite honest, I saw maybe 5 percent of the museum in that hour. The place is so incredibly rich and full of incredible and unique things that an hour is virtually meaningless. I “wasted” about half that precious hour gawking at the massive collection of Lotus cars, which are presented in such a way that you can appreciate every minute detail of them. Cars make up a very small percentage of the museum, which is actually primarily an incredible motorcycle collection. I have never ridden a motorcycle in my life, but I could easily have spent an entire weekend appreciating the bikes.

I’ve never much had a sense of motorcycle design, but in just spending 30 minutes with maybe a dozen or so bikes in detail—and yes, I may have obsessed over the Vincent Black Shadow that so intimidated one Hunter S. Thompson—I came to the realization that with all the running gear visible to the blind eye, a bike designer must consider both and function carefully. From the pieces in the Barber collection, it’s clear that many motorcycle designers are as much artists as engineers.

These are only 50 photos that do not give appropriate justice to the depth of this collection. If you’re anywhere near Birmingham, make it a point to stop here.

Click on the images below to expand them and then scroll to see them all!