Our friend Hubert took us to the Louwman Museum just outside of Den Haag, which was the best museum on the history of cars we had visited up to now. The collection is incredibly comprehensive and so well presented, it was amazing.
The collection of over two hundred cars has been assembled since 1934 by two generations of the Louwman family. The collection was founded in 1934 with the purchase of a 20-year-old Dodge by Dodge importer Pieter Louwman. Evert Louwman, his son and importer of Lexus, Toyota and Suzuki, currently owns the collection. In 2010 the museum was opened by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, whose former home Huis ten Bosch neighbours the museum.
The collection also includes vehicles by Bugatti, Isotta Fraschini, Hispano-Suiza and Duesenberg. It contains around 300 exhibits and is internationally oriented. From the period up to 1910, the museum even has the largest automobile collection in the world. It shows a large part of the 15 still existing classics of the historical Dutch brand Spyker, including the Spyker 60 H.P. from 1903, the first all-wheel drive automobile with an internal combustion engine. From the years after the Second World War, the museum owns, among other things, a car by Winston Churchill, Elvis Presley and the Aston Martin which James Bond drives in the film Goldfinger.
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| 1897, Daimler 6-HP Twin Cylinder, 6 Seater, Brake |
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| 1895, Panhard & Levassor, 1.2 Litre Twin Cylinder, 4-HP, 30 Km/H |
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| 1899, Panhard & Levassor, 1.6 Litre 2 Cylinder, 6 Hp, 55 Km/H |
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| 1912, Phänobil Van, 1.5 Litre 4 Cylinder |
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| Baker Electric Roadster, produced until 1916 |
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| Model Car, 1 Cylinder 4 Stroke, with Gearbox |
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| Art collection with the focus on cars of course |
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| Painting by Frederick Gordon Crosby |
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| 1953 PEGASO Z-102 CUPULA, 2.5 Litre V8, 165 HP |
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| JAGUAR XK 120-C, over all winner of LE MANS 1951 |
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| Young enthusiasts enjoying ALFA ROMEO and FERRARI |
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| LOOK! This is an ALFA ROMEO 12 cylinder Formula One Engine …. |
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| 1957 Daimler DK-400, Golden Zebra Coupe |
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| 1935, DUESENBERG, 6.9 Litre, 8 Cylinder Supercharged, 320 HP |
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| 1934, BUGATTI Type 57 Roadster Grand Raid Gangloff |
What an impressive museum! And it was great that we could visit it together with Hubert.
