Small, crowded, and a royal ache within the trunk lid to drive into throughout rush hour, Monaco seems like an unbelievable location for an enormous automotive museum. And but, this tiny city-state has been carefully linked to automotive tradition for over a century. It hosts two main racing occasions yearly, a lot of its residents would qualify for a frequent shopper card if Rolls-Royce issued one, and Prince Rainier III started assembling a set of vehicles within the late Nineteen Fifties. He opened his assortment to the general public in 1993 and the museum shortly become a preferred vacationer attraction. The gathering continued to develop after his loss of life in April 2005; it moved to a brand new facility positioned proper on Hercules Port in July 2022.
Monaco being Monaco, you’d anticipate to stroll right into a room filled with the newest, shiniest, and strongest supercars ever to shred a tire. That is not the case: whereas there isn’t a scarcity of high-horsepower machines, the primary vehicles you see after paying €10 (roughly $11) to get in are pre-war fashions. In that period, the template for the automotive as we all know it in 2023 hadn’t been created, so an eclectic assortment of pricy and dauntingly experimental machines roamed no matter roads had been out there to them. One is the Leyat Hélica, which was inbuilt France in 1921 with a 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-twin sourced from the world of aviation. Fittingly, the two-cylinder spun an enormous, plane-like propeller.
Authorities automobiles get a particular spot within the museum. They vary from a Cadillac Collection 6700 with an amusing mix of period-correct French-market yellow headlights and large fins to a 2011 Lexus LS 600h with a custom-made clear roof panel that was constructed by Belgian coachbuilder Carat Duchatelet for Prince Albert II’s marriage ceremony. This is the place all of it will get a little bit bizarre: you’ve got bought a 1952 Austin FX3, a Ghia-bodied 1959 Fiat 500 Jolly, a 1960 BMW Isetta, and a 1971 Lotus Seven. That must be somebody’s concept of an ideal four-car storage.
One of the crucial vital vehicles within the assortment lurks within the far nook of the primary corridor, which is positioned a stage beneath the doorway. At first look, it is a kitted-out Renault 4CV with auxiliary lights, a racing quantity on the entrance finish, and a period-correct registration quantity issued within the Bouches-du-Rhône division of France. It would not look all that completely different than the later, unmodified 4CV parked proper subsequent to it. This is what’s particular about it: this is likely one of the small handful of Sort 1063 fashions constructed by Renault for competitors. It notably gained first in its class within the 1951 version of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and its success reportedly satisfied Renault to launch an in-house racing division (which later grew to become Renault Sport). On a secondary stage, it is one of many first hot-rodded economic system vehicles — it is a bit like a scorching hatch with no hatch.
Again upstairs, the museum highlights Monaco’s hyperlink with racing. The principality is greatest know as the house of a Formulation One Grand Prix, but it surely has additionally traditionally been the end line of the World Rally Championship’s Monte-Carlo Rally. A number of basic rally vehicles are on show, together with Group B-spec monsters such because the Peugeot 205 T16 and newer fashions just like the Toyota Yaris WRC. In the event you did not order your quick automotive with a facet of grime, the museum has over half a dozen Formulation One vehicles together with fashions raced by Ferrari and Alfa Romeo. There is a little bit of all the things — the place else are you able to discover a Mitsubishi Pajero that raced within the Paris-Dakar parked subsequent to a Ferrari 365 GTB4 Competizione?
Oddly, the least highly effective post-war automotive is not the tiny Isetta with a motorcycle-derived, 298-cubic-centimeter single-cylinder engine rated at 13 horsepower. It is the 1957 Citroën 2CV, whose 425-cubic-centimeter air-cooled flat-twin develops 12 horsepower at a screaming 4,000 rpm.
I haven’t got royal blood, but it surely seems I’ve bought no less than one factor in frequent with the Prince of Monaco: we each personal a 2CV.
