Cité de l’Automobile, Mulhouse, France

Cité de l’Automobile in Mulhouse, France, is one of the most prestigious car collections in the world and houses the most comprehensive collection of Bugattis anywhere. Whilst visiting Mulhouse, Pan 3Sixty photographer Phil Giles created a virtual tour of the motor museum, giving viewers a flavour of what to expect when visiting this superb museum in person.

History of the ‘Schlumpf Collection’

Brothers Fritz and Hans Schlumpf started the collection in the 1940s, storing the cars in the textile mills they ran. In 1957, they purchased the Mulhouse woollen mill, now the site of the current museum, to store their growing collection. Unlike many enthusiasts who restored, maintained and ran their cars, the Schlumpf brothers were only interested in collecting as many Bugattis as possible for their own private viewing. Other than the brothers and a select number of mechanics who worked on the cars in secret, few were ever allowed to see the collection.

Following a series of acrimonious strikes and confrontations during which the brother fled to Switzerland, disgruntled mill employees broke into the storage areas on the 7th March 1977 and discovered the collection. The sheer size of the collection was staggering; there were 247 cars in the ‘museum’ that Fritz and Hans had created, and another 150 were subsequently found stored in workshops. What was even more amazing was the variety and rarity of the collection, including two of the six Bugatti Royales and no less than 22 Type 57s.

In addition to Bugattis, other marques included Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati and Ferrari, plus many French marques such as Peugeot, Renault, Panhard-Levassor, De Dion and Citroen.

With the textile mills placed into receivership and arrest warrants issued for the brothers on charges of embezzlement, the museum was seized by the French Government. Today, the museum is known as the Cité de l’Automobile.