In March of 1983, my girlfriend and I took a one-week vacation trip to visit her sister and brother-in-law in Germany. The BIL was in the armed services for the U.S., and was stationed in Frankfurt. They had a government-assigned apartment and a room to put us up while we toured the German countryside, happily eating and drinking our way through the week. Somehow, I managed to convince my girlfriend that we should use our rental car to make a slight detour to the small town of Mulhouse, France, a short trip across the border. There in Mulhouse was the French National Automobile Museum, also known as the Schlumpf Collection.
I knew of the Schlumpf brothers and their Bugatti automobiles from numerous articles in the automotive press (especially those in Road & Track) published throughout the 1970s. For those unfamiliar with the long involved history of Ettore Bugatti, his racing and road cars, Hans and Fritz Schlumpf, their Bugatti obsession, and the brothers’ eventual downfall, further reading is recommended, as it is beyond the scope of this blog entry to cover these stories.
If you think of Bugatti only as the builder of the 1,000 horsepower Veyron, their website has this wonderful history. A brief biography of Ettore Bugatti the man is summed up here by Wikipedia. The museum itself does a decent job reviewing its own history (although not every car is included) on its own website.
Back to our visit: we showed up on a weekday morning, and the museum was sparsely attended, although there were several busloads of French students milling about. The sheer number of cars was overwhelming, and the fact that the majority of them were Bugattis in a matching shade of French blue was even more overwhelming. Try as I might to capture them with my film camera, I only shot about two dozen pictures, which leads me to conclude that I had but one 24-exposure roll with me. As I had not documented specific model information for the vehicles I photographed, the museum’s website plus Google were used to research those details. The photo captions provide the year, make and model for all but a few of the cars below.
THE BUGATTIS
OTHER MAKES
The museum visit was a highlight, perhaps the highlight, of that week in Europe. What an honor to be able to say that I visited this tremendous collection in person. Reading the museum’s website, it is eye-opening to see that it has been changed, enlarged, and enhanced, as you might expect of any museum after so many years. It remains on my bucket list to make a return visit to what is now known as the “City of the Automobile – National Museum – Schlumpf Collection”.
All photographs copyright © 2016 Richard A. Reina. Photos may not be copied or reproduced without express written permission.
richardscarblog 
Wonderful pictures! There’s something about the “patina” of old color photos on actual film. What they lack in crisp digital clarity is more than made up for with warmth of the images, just like our memories.
My visit there was in 2000, just about hallway between then and now. From what I see of your pictures and looking at the photos on the website, it would appear many changes took place between your visit and mine. Most notably, the racing car collection, which appears to be distributed along the gaslight lined “streets”, was concentrated in one area simulating starting grids with murals of crowds on the walls.
Another thing that was memorable was the depth and narrowness of the collection. It was of course the FRENCH National Auto Museum and, even aside from the Bugattis, there is a major concentration on the Gallic motoring heritage. Some lovely Italian cars, a smattering of Germans and a few nice British examples, but I don’t think Inspector Poirot himself could have located an American car in the whole building, an absence I did not even notice until after leaving the museum and reflecting on the experience.
When you go again (and you know you want to) spend some time on the west side of the Rhine in the beautiful towns along the wine trial in Alsace.
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Hi Bob,
Great comments, so thank you. Yes, the photos; agree about the warmth of any film shots. The ones posted here were slightly “worked” by me after scanning to clean them up. I’ve found that by both reducing the brightness and increasing the contrast, I can bring out details that would be otherwise lost.
I was not aware that you had been there in 2000. Until I posted this blog entry, I had not realized that at the time of my visit in ’83, the museum had been reopened and under government control for only about a year. So I believe that much of what I saw was how the Schlumpfs themselves had arranged things, and I’m not surprised that you saw very different displays. The museum’s website points out improvements that have me anxious to visit again.
Richard
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[…] in Frankfurt. I insisted that we find our way to Munich so that we could visit the BMW Museum. (This was the same trip during which we visited the Schlumpf Collection in Mulhouse France.) The museum had an Isetta on display, alongside its contemporary 507. The 507 was graced with a […]
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Wunderfull story and pictures. This year our new book about the Schlumpf collection and affair will be available.
This fabulous collection of cars was brought together by two French brothers, Hans & Fritz Schlumpf , and consists of hundreds of the most beautiful cars ever produced. The ‘Schlumpf affair’ is perhaps one of the most famous stories in the car collectors world, covered extensively by the media in the mid-1970s when the collection was seized by the trade unions and later by the French government. The Schlumpf brothers were accused of fraudulent actions to obtain their collection – but following extensive research by the authors of this book, the true story behind the collection is revealed. Ard and Arnoud op Weegh spent many years investigating the Schlumpf affair, and discovered many previously unpublished documents which prove that the Schlumpf brothers have been wrongly accused over the years. This book is written to tell the true story behind the collection, and also to rehabilitate the Schlumpf family.
The book is beautifully illustrated with some rare photographs, and features many of the beautiful cars that make up the Schlumpf collection.
https://veloce.co.uk/shop/products/productDetail.php?prod_id=V5309&prod_group=Cars Vans & Trucks&PHPSESSID=as5u83f8gk39kgqe2cm4g1t4a6
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Hello, and thanks for your comments, and your contributions regarding your new book. I wish you every success with it. Kind regards, Richard
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[…] count, there were 70 of these famed French cars on display, a number that might be rivaled only by the former Schlumf Museum’s holdings. The strong turnout speaks to the high esteem with which Ettore’s cars are held. Many of the race […]
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