Darryl Starbird's National Rod and Custom Car Hall of Fame Museum

Darrell Powers (Atlas Obscura User)

An American custom car and hot rod designer and builder, Darryl Starbird is known among the car community for his futuristic and innovative designs, most of them created during the 1950s and 1960s.

Starbird served as a design consultant for the Monogram hobby corporation, which turned many of his real-life car designs into plastic modeling kits, for children young and old.

Today, Starbird owns and operates the National Rod and Custom Car Hall of Fame Museum in Afton, Oklahoma, where visitors can see more than 50 cars. Some of them are Starbird’s own designs and others are showcased to highlight the history of custom car and hot rod culture. Even those who don’t closely follow auto design might have heard of Starbird when George Lucas incorporated him into the script for American Graffiti. “This may even be better than Darryl Starbird’s superfleck moonbird!” one character exclaimed.

The museum is closed from November through February as most of the cars are displayed outdoors, but Starbird takes many of his pieces with him to show at indoor car shows around the country, including regular shows in Wichita, Kansas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Know Before You Go

Located in in Afton, Oklahoma, the Museum is situated on eighty acres of lakefront in a park-like setting. It's just thirty-five minutes southwest of Joplin, Missouri, off of Interstate I-44 (Tulsa to St. Louis). Take the Afton exit to Grove, Oklahoma Highway 59 then right on Highway 125 to Highway 85A.