Car collector's passion gives Mypolonga a new tourist attraction

The Revolution Motor Museum is part hobby, part business for Aussie Apricots' Prosser family.

Peri Strathearn

17 Jun 2021 — 2 min read

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Paul Prosser crouches beside his 1971 Corvette, the first he bought as a teenager. Photo: Peri Strathearn.

Paul Prosser bought his first Corvette at 18.

He’d spent three years working on the family farm, driving around in an HQ Holden, when he spotted a picture of the 1971 model at an importer.

He had to have it.

Its $16,000 price tag has turned out to be a solid investment – and the first down payment on a dream that is only now coming to life.

Across the road from Aussie Apricots at Mypolonga, a stone fruit’s throw from the family orchard, Mr Prosser’s passion for car collecting is quickly making his shed a tourist destination.

The Revolution Motor Museum holds numerous Corvettes and other models from Mr Prosser’s collection, most purchased in the US and shipped over: an ’86 he got at a car yard in New Jersey, a ’56 T-bird from Beverley Hills, a Trans Am that once belonged to an engineer with General Motors.

Mr Prosser also has custody of a dozen or more early 20th-century vehicles belonging to the Wicks family of Balhannah, including a Gordon cyclecar believed to be the only one left in the world and a Besst which was one of eight built on Adelaide’s Victoria Square.

The rare Gordon from the Wicks family collection. Photo: Peri Strathearn.

“They used to do our trees for us,” Mr Prosser said of the Wickses.

“I was in here one weekend and Peter and Dianne Wicks came and … had a look through, then they said ‘how would you like Dad’s cars?’”

The museum had its first visitors during the past year.

Word has since begun spreading through car clubs and tour groups that there’s a place at Mypo where they can share a barbecue lunch, spend an afternoon looking through the car collection – or watching a movie in the cinema the Prossers have set up in a stone packing shed – then finish off with a few choc-coated apricots.

In time the family plans to turn a century-old homestead on the site, a ruin for the past 77 years, into a picturesque wedding venue and function centre.