Donington Collection to be closed

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Sorry, no Friday Lady for this week, as we wanted to share this news with you.

Yet another motor museum closes its doors!

And this time it’s nothing like a local niche-market museum targeted at the national fanbase of a marque such as the Ford Museum and Auto Union/DKW Museum in The Netherlands (here and here), the Monteverdi Museum in Switzerland (here), or the VW Beetle museum and Big Bengt museum in Sweden (here and here), or even the Hudson motor museum in the US (here) - all of which all closed down in recent times.

No, this is the world’s largest Grand Prix racing car museum, known as the Donington Collection. The brain child of collector extraordinaire Tom Wheatcroft opened its door over 45 years ago in 1973 at the old Donington Park racing track, almost ten years after businessman Wheatcroft bought his first historic single seat racer (a Ferrari). Many were to follow and while Wheatcroft initially concentrated on British historic racers, the collection grew out to become an international one, with racers from a wide variety of origins.

Since the museum’s instigator passed away in 2009, it was run by his son Kevin, who said: “Closing the museum after 45 years has been a really difficult decision, but family responsibilities simply make it the right thing to do.”

The Donington Collection can still be visited for a couple of weeks before the curtain falls later in november (info here). As for yet it remains unknown what will happen to the 130+ strong Grand Prix cars, but fact is that if these will stir up the market for these vehicles if they do end up being for sale.

(Words editor, pictures Tripadvisor)