Mullin Museum to open next month

What promises to be one of the most significant automotive-museum openings in decades will take place next month when collector Peter Mullin opens the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, Calif.

Mullin is known for his love of French cars, and the museum will have more than 100 of them. Graceful and elegant Delahayes, Delages, Talbot-Lagos, Voisins, Hispano-Suizas and Bugattis will all be on hand, wrapped in voluptuous forms from coachbuilders Chapron, Figoni et Falaschi, Gangloff, Vanvooren, Labourdette, Letourneur et Marchand and Saoutchik, among others.

Mullin purchased a significant portion of the fabled Schlumpf Collection, including 12 Bugattis that will be displayed in the new museum. Also from the Schlumpfs came cars from American John Shakespeare, whose collection was acquired by the Schlumpfs in the 1960s and a portion of which Mullin also bought.

Many of the cars will be displayed unrestored, the most extreme example of which has to be a 1925 Bugatti Brescia pulled from the bottom of Lago Maggiore last summer after 70 years underwater.

But Mullin's appreciation of things French extends beyond the beautiful cars. A museum release explained his philosophy:

“Mr. Mullin would like the collection to be known as a museum of the art deco period. The mature forms of that new design language were established by “l'Exposition International des Arts D

By Mark Vaughn