We recently connected with Sean Mathis and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sean, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I inherited my Pop’s 1959 Cadillac Coupe De Ville. I felt so honored and privileged to own my grandpa’s car, I wanted to do everything I could with the car. The car has its own website pops59.com, and Facebook page. I also had multiple articles written and it was featured on the cover of a magazine. On top of all this, I tried to take the car to as many car shows as possible. Eventually, I came up with a concept to store my car and others like it in a climate-controlled building, but rather than it be a bare warehouse or private club, the vehicles would be displayed as museum exhibits when the owners weren’t driving them.

In 2017 I had the opportunity to give my concept a try way before I was actually ready to do it. I literally started a car museum with one car and no money. Six years later, the museum moved locations once and has expanded twice. Today the museum is a full-blown history museum which is a 501c3 nonprofit with about 100 full-size vehicles on display. Our mission is to preserve our automotive history and educate visitors. Many of the vehicles are family heirlooms like mine. I still only own my Pop’s 59 Cadillac, but the museum’s collection has now grown to 13, all of which have been donated by individuals or other automotive museums.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I created a car museum at 32 years old with one car I inherited and no money. The entire museum had to be bootstrapped and I did everything by myself initially. I had no experience in the automotive museum industry or museums in general so I researched as many automotive museums as I could to figure out what would work for what I wanted to do. From the research, I ended up creating the automotivemuseumguide.com which now features over 500 automotive museums across the globe and helped land a spot on the board of the National Association of Automobile Museums (NAAM).

After three years of running Miles Through Time completely by myself, I moved the museum to a new location inside an old textile mill in a portion of unused flea market space. The move was a larger space and would enable the museum to be open all year long, 7 days a week since the flea market staff would sell admission. However, this move made it so I pretty much had to start the museum over again, but this time as a 501c3 nonprofit.

Fifteen months into the new location the new partnership with the flea market was no longer an option since the owner of the flea market chose not to renew his lease. After a slight panic, I decided to take over the entire lease and created Vintage Garage Antiques to help support the museum. I moved out all of the flea market vendors and reorganized the entire space. I also used the opportunity to expand the museum. This was the first time I had total control over the entire visitor experience.

In May of 2023, the museum expanded again into an additional 13,000 sqft. This expansion was justified by expanding Vintage Garage Antiques at the same time. Today, the antique store has well over 100 different booths, and Miles Through Time Automotive Museum has about 100 vehicles.

I had no experience in any of this, just a drive to try to create something that would outlast myself.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Reputation is everything, especially when you’re dealing with people’s prized vehicles, some of which are worth 7 digits. From the beginning, I have been an open book about the museum. I am not who you’d expect to be the mastermind behind creating a museum. I not only didn’t have a ton of money to create something like Miles Through Time, but I also didn’t have any stuff to put on display, aside from one car.

I heavily relied on and still do, help from people all over the country to make Miles Through Time Automotive Museum possible. The museum provides a platform for people to share their prized possessions which are often family heirlooms. Everyone involved with Miles Through Time has the same mentality as I do which is that they want to share their vehicles or historic artifacts with people instead of keeping them stored away where no one can see them. This concept allows people to really feel like they are a part of something and they really are. For visitors, it allows for a super diverse collection to be on display which guarantees they will find something interesting and learn something new.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Explaining how I started a museum can easily be oversimplified. The first museum location was in an old Ford Dealership that was owned by a guy who liked my concept of what I would have hypothetically done with the building. I was able to create a museum in the building, but the building owner was my partner. I never had full control over the direction of the museum and had to do everything by myself for three years. After three years, I actually had planned on closing the museum. Not because it was failing, but because I couldn’t do what needed to be done to take the museum to the next level.

Initially, the museum was open Wednesday through Saturday, April through October, 10 am to 3 pm. The busiest days were typically Saturdays when I might have ten visitors. By August of 2019, I knew I had an opportunity to move the museum to a new location inside of the Old Clarkesville Mill. My intention was to close the museum for the season like normal and then reopen in April in the new location, however, it wasn’t that simple.

I technically had to close the original business and I started over from scratch. The new location required a lot of work to get ready and I still had no money to pay for anything. Everything we did at the new location was done by volunteers and donations. I wasn’t alone this time, Truitt Phillips was a guy who embraced the museum concept early on and when I moved I made him an executive director. Truitt built an entire town in the museum using rough-cut lumber and stuff he had lying around.

To complicate things this was 2020 so we had COVID to deal with as we tried to open the museum. After many delays, we did finally open in May with about as many cars on display as I could have in the original location. I’ve been on a constant mission to continually improve the museum, adding vehicles, memorabilia, and signage.

By November 2021, I had taken over the entire lease of the building, expanded the museum, and created Vintage Garage Antiques which serves the purpose of acting like a huge gift shop for the museum and pays for the lease and utilities of the entire space.

Having an antique shop with the museum was never a part of the plan nor a passion of mine, but it has proved to be a neat aspect for visitors and has helped support the museum in ways the museum could not do on its own.

Today, the museum averages about a thousand visitors a month which is a bit more than the 10 on a Saturday we used to get. The museum is also now able to sustain itself thanks to donations, visitor attendance, and the financial support of Vintage Garage Antiques.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://milesthroughtime.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seantmathis/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mathis.sean
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmathis/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanmathis
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSwqN0itF0eme_N5y7UkrVw
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/miles-through-time-automotive-museum-clarkesville
• Other: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g34840-d19093453-Reviews-Miles_Through_Time_Automotive_Museum-Clarkesville_Georgia.html https://automotivemuseumguide.com https://vintagegarageantiques.com

Image Credits
They’re all photos I took