Electric 1900
Battery cars a century before Tesla — history smirking.
Michiel1972 — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Alf van Beem — CC0 · bertknot from scarborough, australia — CC BY-SA 2.0 · bertknot from scarborough, australia — CC BY-SA 2.0
The world's oldest private car collection: the Louwman family gathering since 1934, generation upon generation — two hundred and fifty treasures from petrol's dawn through the golden fifties in an English-souled brick palace by The Hague's royal forest. The range astonishes in rarities: the oldest Dutch-built cars, steam and electric automobiles of 1900 (yes, electric), the luxurious aviation-bred Spykers, James Bond's gadgeted Aston Martin DB5, Elvis's pink Cadillac, kings' limousines — every piece in running authenticity with its story written in collector's love, not catalogue. Michael Graves's neoclassical building earns its own look — sited near the king's residential Huis ten Bosch: for engine lovers a continental kaaba, for others a museum of stories surprising in delight.
Battery cars a century before Tesla — history smirking.
Holland's extinct flying luxury — the world's completest.
Bond's armed Aston — the dream plate itself.
Leidsestraatweg 57, 2594 The Hague
Two poles of different temper: Mulhouse is Bugatti enormity and a legendary confiscation tale — Louwman a collector's intimacy with piece-by-piece stories and stranger-spectrum rarities. The obsessed pilgrimage to both; the narrative-minded find Louwman 'the more delightful' by striking review consensus.
Better than it sounds: Bond, Elvis and the 'funny' dawn carriages hold children ninety minutes — a treasure-hunt sheet at reception. Beyond that divergence begins — so crop to the stars and close with Silverstone ice cream.
The 'oldests': Benz-era 1880s machines before the car had its name — and the very first automobile to enter Holland, 1896. Plus the only Japanese imperial Toyota outside Japan — decades negotiated for: the acquisition stories themselves displayed as the richest reading.
