The wife & me went to see my mum in Switzerland for my birthday. As I really don't like flying short haul and driving to France is generally a much nicer experience than driving in the UK, we took a car. This also allowed us to stop at Cité de l'Automobile, one of the major French car museums that houses the collection of Fritz Schlumpf, an obsessive Bugatti collector.
The whole collection is massive with a lot of very early cars (1890s onwards) but of course the main draw was to be found in a very nicely arranged but somewhat dark room.
Unfortunately the entity hiding behind my camera had a few issues so only around 50 of 200 shots are actually usable. Oh well.
On to the photos, the above mentioned dimly lit room. There's a couple of bucks worth of cars in this section alone:
Oh look, someone's parked a Bugatti Royale right next to the entrance:
Turn around and there's another one:
This one was one of my wife's favourite ones - unfortunately I can't remember the type:
One of the coachbuilt cars that I found rather impressive. The whole glass area is pillarless:
A rather nice Hispano Suiza convertible. I'd love to have something like that follow me home:
A Bugatti Type 35, daring to be different:
Another of my wife's favourites, a Facel Vega III convertible:
Do they have some race cars? Does the pope wear a funny hat?
And behind some closed glass doors, interesting cars might be lurking:
In other dark corners, you find a Porsche in need of a wash:
Only 6 Bugatti Royales were built, so here is ... number 7:
If I recall the description correctly, Fritz Schlumpf already owned two Royales and knew where the other four were. He also knew that he probably wouldn't be able to buy any of them, but he wanted another one, namely with this particular body, called 'Esders' after the person who commissioned. What he had, however, was lots of parts for Royales. The factory made quite a lot of them as the Royales carried a lifetime warranty. So, he had replica built (or at least started the job, my memory is a little hazy at this point) and voila, number 7.
The little wooden jig is for one of the fenders:
As you continue the tour towards the exit, you'll walk past a couple of Bugatti Type 57s, including this one in its disassembled state:
Just before you get to the gift shop, you walk through a very dark walkway where some of the engines are shown and if you press the correct buttons, you can listen to a recording of them running. This is a very big engine - I think it the same type as used in the Royale but I seem to recall this actually being a train engine:
This engine, a post-WWII prototype, is very small - displacement is only 400cc. If I translated the text on the description correctly, it had been run up to 12900 rpm on an engine dyno and it made over 100bhp. Pretty impressive for the late forties/early fifties.
As mentioned, the have quite a few very early cars. I have no idea what this is, but you better bring some firewood if you want to go for a drive:
Outside the museum the weather was fantastic so we took the Lancia Delta Integrale on a little side trip:
