The world is full of strange collectors. Most of the time it’s just innocent fun, apart from that small but concerning group of psychopaths who collect human body parts. But let’s leave them to quietly browse the dark web for vintage gallbladders and turn our attention to the more harmless eccentrics who populate the outer fringes of collecting culture.
Take for instance, the man who has assembled samples of seawater from every ocean, sea, inlet and probably one very confused bathtub in the world. His collection reportedly includes a jar of “Black Sea in a heatwave” and another of “Baltic Sea with undertones of cod”. Or the chap who runs www.sicksack.com: a lovingly curated online museum of airline sick bags.
Then there are the Victorian stuffed hummingbird enthusiasts; collectors who looked at the tiniest, most delicate creatures in the natural world and thought, “You’d be much nicer filled with sawdust and pinned to a velvet board.” A special mention too for the man who collects parking tickets, including a prized specimen issued in Burkina Faso.
Now, pivot to the world of car collectors: a demographic that is 50 per cent motorsport legend, 40 per cent billionaire and 10 per cent random blokes with a backyard full of rusting Citroëns (or whatever) “for parts”.
Let’s start with the rally legends. Juha Kankkunen, a four-time world champion, has built himself an entire museum in Finland. It contains not only the rally machines of his youth but probably also a sauna that goes from 0 to 100°C in 3.4 seconds.
On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum is Michele Mouton, who drove the fearsome Audi Quattro into legend but never actually owned one. Markku Alén, always refreshingly direct, sees no point in keeping old rally cars at all. “They break all the time,” he explained patiently, as if describing elderly relatives or British Leyland products.
Others collect inspirationally. Kimi Räikkönen, famously unmoved by nearly all things, has a DTM-spec Mercedes in his garage. Petter Solberg still owns his original rallycross Volvo 240: a machine now so old it qualifies for a pension in Sweden. Contrast that with Sébastien Loeb, who goes through supercars like most of us go through mobile phone chargers.
But in the end, all this is pretty normal. Let’s move on to the interesting stuff, such as the club in London whose members are devoted to collecting vintage hearses. Among their prized possessions is the American made “Callaway Corpseshifter” (a name which sounds like a death metal band or a very morbid Transformers toy). The club meets annually, presumably at dusk, wearing top hats and discussing formaldehyde over cucumber sandwiches.
They’re not the only ones. In Ohio, Harold “Spooky Wheels” Thompson, a retired funeral director, owns 22 fully functional hearses with names like Coffin Cruiser, Dead Fast and Grim Reaper’s Uber. The benefits include unbeatable boot space and invitations to the Halloween parties out there.
Closer to home let’s not forget the truly heroic masochists who collect British Leyland cars like the Austin Allegro and Princess. These are not so much vehicles as slow-moving metaphors for industrial decline. To own one is to demonstrate a love of suffering and an ironclad immune system. The Princess in particular has all the charm of a beige washing machine with a drinking problem.
So, what is the best car collection in the world? The top two contenders are clear. First, the Schlumpf Collection in France: basically, Disneyworld for Bugatti obsessives.
Second, the private collection of the Jordanian Royal Family. Housed in Amman, it contains everything from a bulletproof limousine to one of the earliest Mercedes Gullwings, plus a Group A Ford Escort Cosworth, all lined up with the precision of a royal parade. King Hussein had such an eclectic taste in cars, he made Jay Leno look like someone who’d only ever heard of Toyotas. His garage is a monument to the phrase “I’ll take one of everything, please,” and possibly the only place on earth where a Ferrari F40 sits next to a bespoke dune-bashing desert off-roader.
Not far from this collection, Abdul al-Gotham in Dubai decided regular supercars were just too normal, so he collected every Batmobile ever put on screen and built a Batcave garage for them, complete with dry ice fog and voice-activated lighting. He admits they’re impractical for supermarket runs but insists the aesthetic payoff is worth it.
Marcel “Le Fromage” Dubois in France has merged his love of cars and cheese by converting 12 old vehicles into rolling cheese showcases, like the Camembert Convertible and the Limburger Limousine.
But we’ve saved the best until last. Australia’s Baz Thompson drives trucks modified to look like giant porcelain toilets. Each one flushes when he honks, which he does often and proudly. He claims it’s a commentary on traffic etiquette and plumbing standards.
So always remember: if you’re ever inspired to start your own eclectic car collection: weird is just another word for unforgettable.
Author Bio:
Anthony Peacock works as a journalist and is the owner of an international communications agency, all of which has helped take him to more than 80 countries across the world.
Photographs by Gary Harman
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