“Cité de l’Automobile” national museum in Mulhouse in the heart of Alsace in France is the largest automobile exhibition in the world. Covering an area of more than 25,000 square metres, the exhibition comprises 400 of the world’s rarest, most magnificent and most valuable cars. This also includes the largest and most comprehensive collection of Bugatti vehicles in the world.
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The museum is built around the Schlumpf Collection of classic automobiles, assembled painstakingly by two brothers, Fritz Schlumpf and Hans Schlumpf. Fritz Schlumpf bought his first Bugatti at the age of 22 in 1928 and drove it on weekends and in car races. The car enthusiast kept in touch with the Alsace-based company Bugatti over the coming years, although his passion for collecting didn’t really develop properly until the early Sixties.
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In 1957, the brothers acquired a disused wool factory in Mulhouse, Alsace, in order to build their own automobile museum: in honour of their mother and Ettore Bugatti. By then, Fritz Schlumpf had started collecting Bugatti cars. From 1961 onwards, he acquired numerous classic vehicles and eventually became the leading Bugatti collector.
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Fritz Schlumpf soon became obsessed with collecting as many Bugatti vehicles as possible, and he wrote to Bugatti owners all over the world. He obtained the addresses from a register kept by Hugh Conway of the British Bugatti Owners Club, who put him in touch with American collector John W. Shakespeare from Hoffman, Illinois, USA in 1962.
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Determined to acquire this entire collection, Schlumpf made Shakespeare a lump-sum offer of $70,000. But the latter demanded at least $105,000, whereupon Schlumpf had the collection assessed by Bugatti connoisseur Bob Shaw from Illinois in 1963. Shaw arrived at a critical conclusion: “Most of the cars are kept in a part of the building with a dirty floor, broken windows, leaking roof and nesting birds. Every car is in some state of disrepair and none of them have been running for at least 18 months.”
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Shaw advised against the purchase but Schlumpf was fully committed by this time and offered Shakespeare $80,000 for the entire collection. After tough negotiations, mutual threats and blackmail, Schlumpf and Shakespeare finally agreed on a purchase price of $85,000 in 1964 (equivalent to approximately $720,000 today) – including transport to France. This makes it a steal, whichever way you look at it.
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On 30 March 1964, the 30 Bugattis left Illinois on a Southern Railway train heading for New Orleans where they would be loaded onto a Dutch cargo ship. A photo shows the open train with the large number of rare vehicles. A few weeks later, the freighter reached the French port of Le Havre, where Fritz Schlumpf finally received his treasure that took him closer to achieving his goal of being the biggest Bugatti collector in the world. It wasn’t until 1965 that the Schlumpf brothers publicised their collection in a short press release – and the idea of a museum was born. But Fritz Schlumpf never officially opened it.
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The Schlumpf brothers had little opportunity to enjoy their unique car collection, and their pleasure in these wonderful cars was only to last a few years: large-scale strikes occurred after they engaged in questionable business practices, and the decline of the French textile industry in the 1970s eventually meant they were forced to flee to Switzerland. What they left behind is one of the most extraordinary collections of vintage vehicles, including around 100 of the rarest Bugatti classics.
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