CASE STUDY
Performance Upgrade: New Installation
Shining New Light on Classic Cars
Project Summary:
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(29) Recessed Perimeter Fixtures and (73) I5 F-Bay Industrials
250 FC Requirement
Uniformity – Elimination of Shadows
Consistent Color and Color Rendition to Showcase the Vehicles
I5
Cooper Lighting, Peachtree City, GA - AMC is the culmination of a teenager’s
dream to one day publicly showcase investment quality muscle cars so prevalent
on the automotive scene in the 60’s and 70’s.
As a high school graduate in 1969 —
the peak of the muscle car era —
J.A. Wright owned and drag raced
such vehicles. His avocation ultimately
blossomed into a love for vintage
cars, coupled with a strong desire to
bring them back to life for today’s
collectors and future generations of
car buffs. Now operating in a gleaming
new 11,000 square foot museum and
showroom, AMC has become a place
where car enthusiasts can view and
purchase muscle cars such as Shelby
Mustangs, two-seater Thunderbirds,
Camaros, Corvettes, Chevelles,
GTOs, Chargers and Barracudas,
among other vehicles.
In order to view these unique cars, valued from $30,000 to $150,000 and higher, proper lighting was an
extremely high priority. By definition, car restoration work is a precise art and the illumination that shows
every detail of a car’s body and mechanics has to be equally precise.
To meet this challenge, Wright, a former utility commissioner and three-term state senator in North Carolina
who now serves electric and gas utilities as an economic and regulatory matters consultant, brought in
Tommy Floyd of Floyd Electrical Services to address his lighting needs. Floyd turned to Addison-Parrish
Lighting Sales, a Cooper Lighting representa t i ve, for consultation, and thus began a partnership for converting
a warehouse with minimal lighting into a sparkling automotive museum and sales facility.
Wright’s main concern with his lighting plan was that the showroom and museum had to be extremely
bright — as bright as seeing a car outdoors in daylight. A fter a careful inspection of other muscle car facilities,
he understood and appreciated the important role lighting had to play. What he experienced in the facilities
he saw was, in many respects, substandard. Though the lighting made the cars look OK, Wright noted, it was
difficult to see how good or bad the cars really were. Plus, there was no way to clearly see undercarriages
and engine detailing.
(continued next pg.)
Visit our web site at www.cooperlighting.com
Customer First Center 1121 Highway 74 South Peachtree City, GA 30269 770.486.4800 FAX 770.486.4801 energysolutions@cooperlighting.com
ADF070685
CASE STUDY
Performance Upgrade: New Installation
Shining New Light on Classic Cars (continued)
With the lighting requirements understood as a priority, space renovation began in earnest. Walls were painted
white, floors were refurbished with a lustrous grey finish, office space and a detail shop were built out, and
a black and white checkerboard floor was installed in the front part of the showroom.
Going to a computer lighting design program developed by Cooper Lighting and administered by AddisonParrish, Wright and Floyd had the luxury of creating lighting layouts using several different light sources and
fixtures and then viewing these virtual applications for effect. Based on this intensive investigation, the
recommendation was to use Cooper Metalux I5 Series F-Bay Fluorescent High-Bay lighting fixtures.
What followed was the installation of twenty-nine 4-lamp biax (8 lamps) fixtures around the perimeter of the
facility and seventy-three 3-lamp biax (6 lamps) fixtures in the interior, spaced on six foot centers. As a result
of this configuration, a totally uniform wall-to-wall lighting grid emerged producing a consistent 250 fc
throughout the AMC museum and showroom.
Because Atlanta MuscleCars has only been open for a few months, extensive performance results are not
yet available. However, the expectation is that these T5 lamped fluorescent fixtures will provide significant
energy savings (30-50 percent for comparable light levels), better performance and uniformity (negligible
color shift) throughout and a lamp life of 10,000+ hours. Wright already knows that the color rendering the
illumination produces is excellent, and the previously troublesome shadows no longer exist.
When Wright threw the switch and the lighting sparkled for the first time, it was hard to determine which
beamed brighter, the new lighting system bathing the muscle cars with a daylight effect, or the proud owner
of the Atlanta MuscleCars Museum and Showroom. “Though the lighting worked exactly as I expected, seeing
the actual results was very gratifying,” Wright said.
Visit our web site at www.cooperlighting.com
Customer First Center 1121 Highway 74 South Peachtree City, GA 30269 770.486.4800 FAX 770.486.4801 energysolutions@cooperlighting.com
ADF070685