Coventry Transport Museum has opened its new Boomtown gallery, which charts the city’s road transport industry from the 1950s to the 1970s.

A tarmac roadway with working cats eyes guides visitors around a mock car production line, an interactive engine organ; a display of a Mini emerging from a tunnel as featured in iconic movie The Italian Job, filmed in Coventry’s sewers, and a recreated ring road.

The gallery also contains buses, lorries and tractors, including a 20ft display stack of tractors built by Massey Ferguson in Coventry.

Steve Bagley, principal curator, said: “There is a high level of interactivity, lots of vehicles on display and lots of stories to explore. The gallery is fun and entertaining. We hope people will take away a sense of what Coventry was like in the mid 20th century.”

The free museum displays the world’s largest collection of British road transport.