Hugues Vanhoolandt takes us on tour of the Louwman Museum, also known as the Dutch National Motor Museum.
The Dutch National Motor Museum is also called the Louwman Museum, due to the name of its founder, P.W. Louwman, who began to show his collection of cars in a museum in 1934. Mr. Louwman was Dodge and Chrysler importer in the Netherlands and his son, Evert, is now the Toyota and Lexus importer.
The Louwman collection is the oldest private collection of motor cars in the world.
At the time of our visit, the museum housed a special exhibition of pre-war Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows, on loan from the Stuttgart Museum, but Italian and French cars are always well represented in the collection.
Louwman’s will send the famous Roland Garros Black Bess Bugatti to the Paris Retromobile show in February. Read about Garros and the Black Bess Bugatti in VeloceToday this month.
This 1933 Maserati 8CM saw three of the greatest drivers of the time behind the wheel; Raymond Sommer, Tazio Nuvolari and Piero Taruffi.
1933 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Le Mans Touring was driven at Le Mans by Louis Chiron and Franco Cortese.
1941 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Spider Corsa ‘Balena’ was an experimental car in which the engine and the body were developed by Gioacchino Colombo, who later designed the 125 Ferrari V12.