The very rainy weather made us look for another museum, and we found one with cars! The Collection Schlumpf in Mulhouse was the perfect location to spend at least half a day inside.
The collection of the Schlumpf brothers begins 1936 with the purchase of a Bugatti, a real competition car, from the prestigious Alsatian car manufacturer.
Between the 1930s and 1970s, the brothers managed to obtain the monopoly for combed yarns in France, fully dominating the worsted yarn market at that time.
Between 1945 and 1977, the brothers Fritz and Hans Schlumpf assembled an enormous collection of around 500 classic automobiles, including several dozen Bugatti and two of the six surviving “Bugatti Royales”. To finance this hobby, they burdened their companies in such a way that they became insolvent in 1977 and had to flee the country.
The automobile collection, which was not known to the public until then, was discovered by the former workers of the textile factory during a strike.
The former workshop of one of their textile factories in Mulhouse now houses the Musée National de l’Automobile France, also known as the Collection Schlumpf. It is decorated with 900 lampposts imitating those of the Alexandre III bridge in Paris.
The striving and work of the Schlumpf brothers is contradictory: completely ignoring their economic and social responsibility – both to themselves and to their employees – they left one of the largest and most fascinating automobile museums in the world to posterity.
On our next post, you will find a special collection of Bugattis, Edi’s favourites. Immerse into the beauty of these cars with our next post – soon we will find something else than cars again – promised!