Looks like Ralph Lauren's not the only one with a secret stash of rare cars. In the Associated Press video below, we get a rare glimpse inside a "secret Smithsonian storage warehouse," where 217 rare automobiles dating back to 1899 lay covered in blankets.
Each model was acquired for historical importance and posterity--a "doomsday thinking/Noah's Ark" mentality, in the words of the National Museum of American History's Roger White--and currently just two of them are being prepared for exhibition: A 1929 Miller race car and a 1948 Tucker. We suppose the Miller's interesting because it's supercharged, but what really gets our juices going is that '48 Tucker, the radically-designed failure made famous by the 1988 Coppola movie.
Two interesting historical footnotes: Preston Tucker, before working on the original U.S. military jeep, conceived of a high-speed armored combat car way back in 1937. The Tucker Tiger had a V12 engine and could hit 115 miles per hour, yet was designed to navigate through muddy off-road conditions, and it also featured a machine gun turret. The Nazis invaded Holland, the intended car's buyer, before it hit production and the project was shelved.
Secondly, industrial designer Read Viemeister, one of the original creators of ID Magazine, was on Preston Tucker's design team. His son, designer Tucker Viemeister, was named after Preston.