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on consecrated ground

The museum, located in an old church, has exceptional and history-charged exhibits to offer.

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Gerd,
More great history.

Gerd, good to hear from you - Thanks!

Mal, Randy, anytime!

The cradle of motorized transportation

Having arrived at the starting point of automobility, visitors of the museum find themself surrounded by road locomotives and iron-tired, pedal-supported wheel hub motors installed into ferronnerie.
Within breath-taking years the development of cars gathered pace. At the bottom please find attached a couple of pics, showing a Peugeot with dual pneumatic tires and unknown auxiliary equipment, made in 1909.

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This car stirred my blood, an unrestored Hispano-Suiza K6, bodied by Henri Binder as Coup? de Ville (also called Coup? de Ma?tre but for the most of you a Town Car). In 1935 its hydraulic shoc absorbers had already been adjustable and the six-cylinder in-line engine delivered 140 hp.
Years ago I photographed another Henri Binder creation, that was even more impressive: a Bugatti Royale.

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After looking at a Bugatti Royale prototype, I discovered that there's a Packard connection as well:

motorauthority.com/news/1104744_now-ther ... bugatti-royale-prototype-re-created

BDC, thanks. Fancy a video?


image source: vancello.blog.hu

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Part II

The spring has arrived in Paris. At night my window was wide open to let the balmy air into the hotel room. Outdoors the Eiffel Tower was greeting with a surreal-seeming light beam.
Yesterday I viewed a Renault A, that was created even before the company was founded. Its external Bosch ignition is an impressive example of early "globalization" - 62 years before that term came into being (according to Nayan Chanda: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors shaped Globalization. Yale University Press, New Haven 2007, ISBN 978-0-300-11201-6, page 246).

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Further pics of the Renault progenitor. The first two show the manual ignition adjustment, a method that was still in use 50 years later.

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Those early Renaults are very cute little cars, it looks so small in the first picture you might think it's a model or toy. This is one a friend of mine in Perth, Australia recently restored and then participated in the London-Brighton run with it. One of the remarkable findings to him was that Renault still had almost every one of the original engineering drawings.

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