Childhood fantasies in reality

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One benefit of our trip to the town of Scheveningen at New Year’s Eve, was the chance of a visit at the Louwman Museum in The Hague only about 5 miles away from our Hotel. But unfortunately, we only had one and a half hour to hurry through the exhibition. What luck that I already visited the collection two years ago. The Museum is housed in an attractive three-floor building with a more than 10.000m² exhibition area. The collection shows more than 200 cars, motorcycles and carriages together with lots and lots of automobilia. The tour through the museum starts at the second floor and like in every IKEA store, you just follow one route and can enjoy your visit, without having the fear of missing only one exhibit until the end of the route, that leads to a very nice restaurant-area. As I concentrated on the prewar cars at my last visit, I focussed on the postwar exhibits this time. Some of my all-time and some of my childhood favourites can be marvelled. As a teenager I always admired the specials of Franco Sbarro and since the IAA 1985 or 1986, I never saw a car of this Swiss company, except of one or two of its BMW 328 replicas. The Sbarro Challenge was a car you had to admire as a 15-year old in the 1980s as it was even more spectacular than a Lamborghini Countach and so I was very fascinated to see this car again. Another favourite is of course the Jaguar XK-SS, and that, even if I know, that with nearly 2 metres and over100kgs, I will never fit in this small street-racer. The same for the Japanese E-Type look-alike, the Toyota 2000GT. What a spectacular little car! Also a childhood-dream is of course the James-Bond-DB5. As most of my friends, I also had a little Corgi-version of this Goldfinger leading-actor and like at most of my friends, it didn’t take long, untill my mum ‘hoovered’ the little figurine after its ejection-seat pullout onto the carpet.

But the most bizarre beauty was the 1952 Pegaso Z-102 Cupola. This version of the Pegaso was built just two times and this is the sole survivor. If you spot the car, you can only think of Saoutchik or another coachbuilder with hyperbolical design-ideas, but in this case, it is totally wrong. The car was built by Spanish coachbuilder Enasa and followed sketches of design-students, who were asked to show their ideas of a ‘car of the future’. The car was presented at the New York Motor Show in 1953 and even competed in the Carrera Panamericana 1954. With its yellow paint and red tires it is an absolute eye-catcher even in this collection. At 5 o’clock, after not even two hours in the building, the doors closed much too early and we had to leave, but I’m quite sure, it won’t take long for my next visit. And then I will stay from dawn till dusk!”

(Words and pictures: Hubertus Hansmann)


    

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