Route 66 Auto Museum

Bozo Cordova has been a Santa Rosa fixture for most of his adult life. He grew up in Santa Rosa during Route 66's commercial peak in the 1950s and 1960s, when the highway through town was lined with motels, gas stations, diners, and tourist-trap roadside attractions catering to the steady stream of traffic between Albuquerque and the Texas border. The decommissioning of Route 66 in 1985 — when the final stretches of the original highway were replaced by I-40 — devastated Santa Rosa's tourism economy along with that of dozens of similar small towns along the corridor. Bozo's commitment to classic cars and Route 66 memorabilia is partly a personal hobby and partly a deliberate effort to preserve and promote what is left of the original Route 66 experience in Santa Rosa.

The museum opened in its current form in the early 2000s — part of the broader Route 66 revival that has unfolded across the corridor since the late 1990s, as nostalgia for the original highway has driven a substantial increase in road-trip tourism. Bozo built the collection gradually over decades through personal restorations, private purchases, and trades with other classic-car collectors across New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. The museum's current 30+ vehicle collection represents the working portion of Bozo's larger collection; vehicles rotate in and out of the museum display based on restoration status, recent acquisitions, and Bozo's personal preferences.

The personal-collector nature of the museum is genuinely part of its appeal. Unlike larger institutional museums that present sanitized chronologies and curated narratives, the Route 66 Auto Museum reflects one specific enthusiast's taste and judgment. The result is more idiosyncratic — there are gaps in the chronology, the lighting is sometimes inconsistent, the interpretive signage is hand-lettered — but the personality is unmistakably authentic in a way that polished institutional museums rarely match.

The museum's permanent collection includes more than 30 classic American cars spanning roughly three decades from the 1930s through the 1960s. The exact lineup rotates based on restoration projects and recent acquisitions, but the typical mix includes pre-war cars from the 1930s and early 1940s (Ford Model A and Model T variants, early Chevrolet sedans, classic American touring cars), post-war classics from the late 1940s and 1950s (the iconic Chevrolet Bel Air, Ford Crown Victoria, Pontiac Star Chief, and Cadillac Coupe DeVille of the chrome-and-fins era), and a strong selection of 1960s muscle and pony cars (early Mustangs, Camaros, GTOs, and other muscle-era performance vehicles).

Beyond the standard production cars, the museum has a particular strength in customized vehicles — hot rods built on classic Ford and Chevrolet platforms with modified engines, dropped suspensions, and custom paint; lowriders representing the Southwestern Latino car culture that has produced some of the most artistically distinctive American customization; and Route 66-themed vehicles with airbrushed Route 66 highway shields, vintage Route 66 advertising graphics, and other road-related decoration. Several of the vehicles are working drivers that Bozo and his team take to regional car shows and Route 66 events.

The collection also includes period accessories and decoration — vintage gas pumps, Route 66 highway shields, original neon signs from defunct Santa Rosa motels and businesses, vintage automotive advertising, license plates spanning multiple decades, and a substantial collection of period photographs of Santa Rosa during the Route 66 era. The non-automotive memorabilia provides genuinely useful context for understanding the cars within their original Route 66 commercial environment.

One of the museum's most distinctive features is the frequency of personal owner-led tours. Bozo is generally on-site during operating hours and is usually willing to walk visitors through the collection, share stories about specific vehicles, explain restoration techniques, and discuss Santa Rosa's Route 66 history. The tours are informal — they happen when Bozo is available and not otherwise occupied with restoration work — but they are genuinely substantive and significantly enhance the standard self-guided museum experience. Visitors who hope for a personal tour should plan to arrive in mid-morning or early afternoon when the museum is typically less busy.

The on-site gift shop sells the standard Route 66 souvenir mix — t-shirts, postcards, magnets, coffee mugs, and books about Route 66 history. The merchandise is comparable to what visitors find at other Route 66 gift shops along the corridor, with the modest additional appeal of supporting a privately-operated museum rather than a corporate retailer. Prices are reasonable; the t-shirts run $15-25 and postcards a few dollars each.

The adjacent Comet II Drive-in diner is separately operated from the museum but pairs naturally with a museum visit. The Comet II serves classic American diner fare — burgers, sandwiches, fries, milkshakes, and standard breakfast options — at the kind of small-town diner prices that have become rare in more touristed Route 66 destinations. The diner's classic mid-century building exterior is itself a photographic subject for Route 66 enthusiasts, and the combination of museum plus diner produces a satisfying lunch-and-cars Santa Rosa stop.

The museum is open daily from 7:30am to 7pm — substantially longer hours than most small-town museums, which generally reflects the working-shop nature of the property (Bozo is often there working on restoration projects regardless of whether visitors are present). Admission is $5 for adults; children under 12 are typically free or reduced-rate. The museum accepts cash and major credit cards.

Photography is encouraged throughout the museum — Bozo wants visitors to share images on social media and in Route 66 publications, and there are no restrictions on flash photography, video, or commercial photography for non-commercial road-trip blogs and travelogues. The lighting inside the museum is uneven (a mix of natural light from windows and overhead fluorescent fixtures), so photographers may want to bring lens supports or higher-ISO-capable cameras for lower-light interior shots. Many of the most photogenic vehicles are positioned near the windows for natural light.

The museum pairs naturally with the rest of a Santa Rosa Route 66 day. Standard plan: morning at the Blue Hole (see separate listing) for swimming, photography, or scuba, late morning visit to the Auto Museum, lunch at the adjacent Comet II diner or at Joseph's Bar and Grill (see separate listing) in town, and continuing west on I-40 toward Albuquerque or east toward Tucumcari. The museum's location on Will Rogers Drive makes it easy to find from any of the I-40 Santa Rosa exits, and the 1-2 hour typical visit fits naturally into a half-day Santa Rosa stop.