Copenhagen’s Classic Collection

Story and photos by Bob Cullinan

You take the train from Copenhagen Central Station to the small suburban town of Lyngby, Denmark. From there, it’s a short walk to an automobile collection that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Housed in a complex of brick buildings and manicured courtyards, it’s part museum, part car hotel, and part classic car workshop. Welcome to the K.W. Bruun Classic Car House. A former agricultural research lab and museum, the land and buildings were purchased by K.W. Bruun in 2020. After extensive expansion and renovation, the 25,000-square-foot Classic Car House opened to the public in 2023.

It’s a brilliant concept. The cars on display are a mix of the museum’s own acquisitions and privately owned classics. The private owners pay monthly fees to have their prized possessions housed and displayed in the museum’s car hotel. 300 automobiles are displayed at any given time. 100 are from the Bruun collection, and 200 more are customer cars in storage.

Karl Wilhelm (K.W.) Bruun’s lifelong work in the automobile business began in 1925, when he first started importing Fiats from Italy to Denmark. When Germany began the occupation of Denmark in 1940, K.W. Bruun hid 150 cars in barns and friends’ houses and turned the car dealership into an art gallery. He survived the war by focusing on selling art, shoes, and his “hidden” cars.

Unlike their nearby neighbors, Denmark has no domestic automobile industry. Sweden had Saab and Volvo. Germany has BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Porsche. However, Denmark did have a robust motorcycle manufacturer. Between 1919 and 1960, Nimbus motorcycles were made in Denmark…but no more.

All new cars imported into Denmark are heavily taxed and buyers pay 85-150% of the purchase price in taxes. But these taxes aren’t levied on used cars. So Danes covet their old cars, and they keep them up and running much longer. And classic cars are worshiped in this country.

Denmark is a land of effective public transit. There are cheap, reliable, efficient interconnections between trains and busses, and in the major cities thousands of people commute to work, school, and shop by bike every day. Cars are more of a luxury than a necessity.

There is a hierarchy to the autos housed in the Classic Car House hotel. The owners who have their cars parked in the cellar…the “Silver” level…pay 1,500 Danish Kroner (about 225 US Dollars) per month. The “Gold” level is for cars stored on the floor. They pay 2,000 Kroner (about 300 Dollars) monthly, and the cars in the glass enclosures, the “Platinum” level cars, are charged 3,000 Kroner (about 450 Dollars) each month.

The museum is celebrating 100 years of Le Mans, with a lineup of original race cars and authentic re-creations.

Front and center of the Le Mans display is the legendary 1956 Fiat Bartoletti 306/2, the transporter built to move these cars from circuit to circuit in the 1960s. You may have seen this classic hauler in the 1971 Le Mans film, starring Steve McQueen.

The team of skilled mechanics and technicians in the workshop do everything from regular service and mechanical repairs to body work and painting. Their services are not only for the cars housed in the garage. They also prep and pamper historic autos for any interested owner.

There’s more on the Classic Car House here: https://en.classiccarhouse.dk/. And more images of this unique automobile experience, below.

Bob Cullinan is a contributing writer at VeloceToday. He can trace his lifelong passion for motorsports back to two seminal events: The release of the John Frankenheimer film “Grand Prix” in 1966, and Christmas, 1971, when his father presented Bob with “The Encyclopedia of Motor Sport.” During his work as a television reporter and host, Bob covered motorsports events at Laguna Seca, Pebble Beach, Sears Point, and Willow Springs Raceway. He has photographed the Mille Miglia, Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, The ICE St. Moritz, Coppa delle Alpi, and his most memorable event, the Monaco Historic Grand Prix. Bob was recently granted photo access at the London memorial for Sir Stirling Moss, his all-time favorite driver.