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I come from what is very much a car-oriented family. My dad could rattle of the make, model and year of any classic car at a glimpse, a skill that rubbed off on my brother who self-trained himself to be an un-certified mechanic and mom is, of course, a successful former stock-car driver.
Whilst I have always been and remain the black sheep of the family in this regard I unquestionably inherited a strong appreciation for the aesthetic beauty of the machines, and while I still can’t distinguish a Lincoln from a Cadillac I never miss the opportunity to visit any and every car museum I come across, and on November 23rd, 2013 I visited the granddaddy of them all, the Louwman Museum.
After several trips to Amsterdam I had finally booked a couple of nights outside of town. I had visited Delft and The Hague on a day trip the last time I was in The Netherlands and thought (correctly, it turned out) that a couple of days in The Hague would be a pleasant, easy excursion.
I had already checked out the Escher Museum on my previous visit and had spent the first of these two days seeing all I needed to of The Hague so the only thing I had on my plate for the day was the Louwman Museum. With this in mind I made the poor decision to walk a couple of miles along one of the many canals from my downtown hotel to the museum. When I arrived shortly after the place opened my feet were already a bit sore, and they had a big day coming.
The Louwman Museum is the world’s oldest car museum, dating back to 1934, if you can believe that. Starting with the purchase of what was then a twenty-year-old Dodge, the wealthy Louwman family has built up a collection of some of the most special, peculiar, and astounding pieces of automotive art the world has ever produced. To think that back in, say 1948 a museum that could have acquired a brand-new vehicle and kept it in mint condition all this time. This is such a museum. In 2010 the collection was implanted into a fantastic building created specifically to house the collection, and I spent the entire day there from opening to close, gaping and staring at stunning machine after stunning machine with breathless admiration.
The tour begins on one side of the museum and takes you through the entire history of automotion, beginning with remarkably restored litters (also known as King-carriers), those wheel-less carriages that would be carried by slaves or servants. Then you move on to what is literally the oldest motor-operated vehicle on the planet – not “one of” the oldest motorized vehicles on the planet, but “the” oldest motorized vehicle on the planet…remember, this is a pretty serious car collection – and on to a virtual smorgasbord of steam, battery, and early combustion-engine wheeled machines.
Oh, did I mention that everything in the collection is in working order?
The four floors of the wing lead past the most incredible examples of production-run cars you could imagine, featuring many examples that were the first or last off the line. They have the oldest known Toyota in existence, acquired when it was discovered in a barn in Siberia, of all places. The have an entire room full of hybrid vehicles from pre-1910. It’s room after room of perfection, curated masterfully.
When I finally finished the wing I sat and enjoyed lunch in the museum restaurant, only the second time I’ve ever eaten a meal in a museum (the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia was the other).
The other wing was dedicated exclusively to racecars, again arranged chronologically and again astoundingly comprehensive. They had the winner of the first Le Mans and dozens that followed. They had six-wheeled Formula 1 cars and a roomful of racers that looked like the car token from Monopoly.
Get this: there was a racecar* that crashed as it crossed the finish line for some major race, the Le Mans or something back in the 30’s or 40’s, I don’t remember exactly. The crash tore the car in two and both halves were sold off separately, and each half was built into a new car. The Louwman tracked down both cars, bought them and chopped them, attaching the front half of one to the back half of the other in order to recreate the original racer. I mean this place had cool stuff.
At one point I was standing near a gentleman in his mid-fifties in a room full of Formula 1 cars. I heard him blurt out in a stutter, “M-m-m-my g-g-god…Th-this must b-b-be the g-g-greatest m-m-m-museum in the w-w-world!” The man was clearly quite aghast; he had spoken quietly, addressing no one.
I caught his eye and nodded solemnly. “Yes,” I agreed, “I think you’re right.”
Honestly, I had to rush to get through the last couple of floors before closing time. I had spent seven or eight hours in the Louwman and I could have easily used a couple more despite my groaning, swollen feet. I lingered until the very last minute knowing full well I would miss the bus back to the city centre. Rather than wait an hour for the next one I forced my beleaguered feet to carry me back to my hotel, visions of four-wheeled greatness distracting my mind the whole way.
The Louwman Museum: Best. Car. Museum. Ever.
*”racecar” is one of my favourite palindromes
Todd Man Out 