12 Cars of Chip Foose Star at the Savoy Museum (2024)

Chip Foose has made more cool cars than possibly anyone alive—and maybe anyone dead, too. But what does he have in his own garage? Quite a cool collection, it turns out. And the whole thing, 12 cars and trucks, are on display at the Savoy Automobile Museum in Cartersville, Georgia, an hour outside Atlanta.

It might be worth flying to Atlanta and renting a car to see it, even though whatever you rent at the airport won’t be as cool as the cars you’ll see in the collection.

“The Savoy Automobile Museum is excited to announce the opening of its newest temporary exhibit, What's in Chip's Garage?” the Savoy announced.

Indeed, what is in his garage?

Here is a list:

• 1932 Ford Model 18 Deluxe Roadster
• 1932 Ford Model 18 5-Window Coupe
• P-32 1932 Ford Highboy Roadster
• 1933 Ford Model 40 Station Wagon Woodie
• 1934 Ford 3-Window Coupe
• 1948 Ford Deluxe Custom
• 1956 Ford Club Sedan
• 1956 Ford F-100 Pickup Custom
• 1967 Chevrolet C-100 Truck (C28)
• 1968 330 Ferrari GTC
• 2023 Meyers Manx “356”
• Hemisfear

You might remember some of those. The Hemisfear was a big collaboration between Foose, who designed it, and Metalcrafters, which built it. That was 17 years ago.

The car is powered by a 6.4-liter, 550-hp Hemi V8 sitting behind the two seats and driving the rear wheels via a Pantera-style transaxle. Sounds like it’d be fun to drive. Here’s what I said when I drove it at the old Marine Corps Air Base in Tustin 17 years ago:

Once the butterflies crack open and the air/gas mixture is bellowing into the chambers at prime stoichiometric, the Hemisfear is all roarin’ acceleration. With 550 hp and weighing in at 2,775 pounds, the power-to-weight ratio is 5 pounds per horsepower, smack between an Enzo and a Murciélago.

The feel is stable, too. This is no ’32 hot rod cobbled together in shop class and screwed onto a fake frame. The whole chassis-suspension marriage feels as solid as that on some race cars. At what felt like more than 100 mph (we didn’t look at the gauges), the Hemisfear was low and flat, stable as a Midwestern marriage. Rounding the corner from one runway to the next, the g’s swayed from longitudinal to lateral, and the enormous tires gripped hungrily over the left-hander of the sweeping taxiway.

Back on a parallel runway, the whole process started again, the exhaust cracking through the still air like a hundred angry garden gnomes firing tiny Uzis backward off the decklid. They sounded like good shots.

The Hemisfear and the Foose Coupe (the names change per the power unit, Chrysler or Ford) were, at the time, the lifelong dreams of Chip Foose. He drew the car when he was a student at Art Center (33 years ago), and only now that fame and fortune have smiled on him does he have the wherewithal to start building it. And build it he will; all 50 cars should be out the door within two years.

That production forecast turned out to be a little optimistic. The project crashed and burned soon after the first two cars were revealed. Never did find out what happened.

Each of the other 11 cars in the Savoy show have similar stories, no doubt. And each has an undeniable Foose take on design, one he learned working in his dad Sam Foose’s shop starting at age seven, then honed further at Art Center, then at Boyd Coddington’s, and then at his own company, Foose Design.

It’s a little early to say this is a lifetime collection, and Foose is still way too young to be getting Lifetime Achievement awards, but the Savoy show is a nice tribute to the work of Chip Foose so far.

It runs through June 9, so start planning your visit now.