SUPERCARS
ROTTING IN A FOREST
G'day folks,
This post might stun you, and might be a painful
sight for classic car enthusiasts.
Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz,
BMW; just a few of the iconic names whose logos you would never expect to find
on vehicles in such a sorry state. But what might really shock you is that
these unfortunate automobiles are not actually abandoned, and their owner is in
fact a classic car lover and expert himself, who has deliberately left these
cars here at the mercy of mother nature.
Michael Fröhlich is the kind of
guy who can track down a Mercedes limousine that once ferried around Adolf
Hitler. A former fashion designer, racer, philosopher and artist among other
things, these days, Michael is best-known as a unique classic car dealer and
expert restorer.
Yet he drives around his hometown of Düsseldorf in a
charred Rolls Royce that was all but incinerated when his dealership burnt down
in 2005. He has written several reference books and travelled the world
searching for rare automobiles and tracking down lost collections.
We are more or less in his backyard, or what he likes to
call his Auto
Skulpturen Park, a museum/ sculpture
park of sorts in the Neander Valley near Mettmann, Germany. Surrounded by a
security fence in the wooded hillside next to Fröhlich’s house, fifty
classic cars were parked here when the car enthusiast turned 50 in the year
2000.
Each and every car is from the year he was
born, 1950, and was personally tracked down and purchased by Michael himself.
“They’re like my brothers,” Fröhlich told Spiegel in 2009. Many were
still roadworthy when they were parked on his property, never to be driven
again.
A surreal showcase of dream cars nestled in the forest,
unpolished, exposed to the elements, some even crashed into trees and others
half buried in mud– this was his extravagant 50th birthday present to himself,
a grand artistic display of rotting automobile history.
“Nature is stronger than technology, and that I will show
here,” said Michael, who has no doubt succeeded in displaying the power of
nature that triumphs over even some of the most revered examples of man-made
machinery.
TV crews, photographers and fans were invited to the
opening in the summer of 2000, but from what I can gather, this “museum” has
rarely been open to the public since. We’re taking a virtual tour thanks to the
photographs of father and son car collectors and experts, Arnoud and Ard op de
Weegh from their book on special car cemeteries
in Europe.
Clancy's comment: Gob smacking! I wonder who has driven and sat in these cars during their lifetime.
I'm ...
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