Name this car....

[pedaes]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

47 minutes ago, wlaidlaw said:

Mulhouse is like lots of museums

To fully appreciate the Museum it is well worth knowing the history of the Schlumpf brothers who assembled most of the collection, certainly the Bugattis. When I visited back in the 80's it was very much in its original state, and you entered by a small side door. We were lucky in that we caught an event where they had gathered every Bugatti Royale in existence together, including the one owned by 'Mr Domino's Pizza' in the US. Still have the Poster for the gathering somewhere.

Edited Monday at 04:47 PM by pedaes

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[wlaidlaw]

36 minutes ago, pedaes said:

To fully appreciate the Museum it is well worth knowing the history of the Schlumpf brothers who assembled most of the collection, certainly the Bugattis. When I visited back in the 80's it was very much in its original state, and you entered by a small side door. We were lucky in that we caught an event where they had gathered every Bugatti Royale in existence together, including the one owned by 'Mr Domino's Pizza' in the US. Still have the Poster for the gathering somewhere.

On my visits to Mulhouse I used to stay in a chambres d'hôte, which was owned by the daughter of the Schlumpf's chief engineer. She said 90% of what was written about them in the papers was rubbish, especially about the secrecy of it all. She said that the Schlumpfs would happily lend out cars for weddings and special events for locals, free of charge and you would see the cars out and about in Mulhouse all the time.

One of the problems for the museum is down to French museum legislation. They would love to sell off some of their surplus/duplicates collection to fund the restoration of other cars or otherwise improve the museum. I know they have in their warehouses a derelict type 54 Bugatti (along with lots of others, a crashed type 32 Tank Bugatti) that we tried to buy from them about 15 years ago. The director asked for permission to sell it but was refused by the bureauprats in Paris. We even suggested to them a swap for our Gangloff bodied Bugatti 57SC (the ex Ralph Lauren car and one of only two original factory SC cars, not a later upgrade) for the 54 plus a number of their other stored Bugattis but again Paris refused.

Oddly though a much sought after car, the 57SC was not a nice car to drive, I suspect because the Ralph Lauren restoration had concentrated on appearance to try and win Pebble Beach and the mechanical restoration was not done by a Bugatti expert, like Tim Dutton, who we would use for vintage Bugatti work. I think the front tubular axle wedge adjustment was incorrect leading to very heavy steering, the rear shock absorbers were far too soft, the brakes were indifferent (although that is pretty good for a Bugatti, which are notorious for dreadful brakes, that sadly resulted in the death of Jean Bugatti in a type 55) and that the supercharger had very worn lobes and gears, leading to poor performance. It was supposed to have 200 BHP. I would guess that it might have had 110 on a good day. 

Wilson