The Leidsestraatweg holds the oldest private car collection in the world. It started in 1934, when Dodge importer Pieter Louwman bought a twenty-year-old Dodge and decided to keep it. His son Evert grew the collection to more than two hundred and fifty vehicles.
The cars wandered the country first. From Leidschendam in the nineteen sixties to Raamsdonksveer, and in 2010 into this building by the American architect . opened it, which was a short drive for her: sits around the corner.
Inside, the earliest years of the motor car stand closer together than almost anywhere else. The oldest vehicle is a from 1886, built when a car was still a carriage with an engine dropped into it. Fifteen Spykers are lined up, the Amsterdam marque that in 1903 built the first four-wheel-drive car in the world, meant for a race that never took place.
Between the cars hang drawings and posters, because the museum also collects the way people dreamed about driving.
Still have energy afterwards? This is a good moment to walk one of our routes through The Hague.
Sources. Story: Louwman Museum and Stichting Het Nationaal Automobielmuseum (louwmanmuseum.nl) on the history of the collection and the building. The Spyker 60 HP and the 1886 Benz: collection description by the European Route of Industrial Heritage. Photos: Source photo: Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
