Description
Author: William Stobbs, Hardbound, 190 Pages, ISBN: 9780213168438, First Edition, 1983 excellent like new condition
The motor car has changed the face of the world, and recently there has been a growing acceptance not only of its social significance but also of motor car design as an art form. As a result motor museums have proliferated rapidly : in 1950 there were only about twenty in Europe; by 1970 this figure had leaped to eighty; and now there are over 160.
In the first comprehensive guide to all the European museums, illustrated with over 100 photographs, William Stobbs describes every serious collection open to the public, and gives technical details of many of the exhibits. He also provides directions for finding them, for they range from vast and celebrated museums like the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu and the Biscaretti in Turin to small and specialist collections tucked away in remote villages. One of the least familiar, and possibly the most spectacular of all, is the legendary Schlumpf Collection, with its unique hoard of Bugattis, assembled in secret at Mulhouse. The subject of bitter legal wrangles, it was only opened to the public in 1982.
The origins of these collections are equally diverse, for while science museums record the development of the internal combustion engine and show the most important landmarks in its history, and manufacturers like Daimler-Benz and Renault have opened their immaculate collections to the public, many of the finest museums have developed from private collections, like that of Baron Raben-Levetzau at Aalholm, or from the idealism of groups of enthusiasts who have rescued neglected vehicles from barns and scrapheaps and patiently restored them.
With this book William Stobbs has now made all these shrines to the motor car accessible to fellow enthusiasts.
