Cité de l’Automobile

Just over the border into France, an hour from our base in the Black Forest, was a special car museum that Chris had been keen to visit for some time.

The Cité de l'Automobile is a striking glass and steel building that is home to over 400 rare and classic vehicles. The origins of the collection goes back to when local wool merchants, the brothers Schlumpf, developed a passion for Bugatti cars. Over many years, this passion became a compulsive obsession, which resulted in the largest collection of classic Bugatti cars, under one roof, in the world. An extraordinary feature of this collection was that it was, despite its size, unknown outside of the family and the full-time mechanics and craftsmen that were employed to maintain and restore all the cars to full running order. It was only after their huge business collapsed in the 1970's, and they fled to Switzerland, that the collection was discovered to the amazement of car enthusiasts worldwide. The collection is now open to the public and has been expanded to include some of the earliest 'cars' dating from 1885 through to the latest Bugatti hypercar.

We spent all day there listening to our audioguide as we wandered around but it wasn't long enough to take it all in and so we shall have to come back another time.Read more