Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   Beyond Borders (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/beyond-borders/)

-   -   Louwman Car Museum @ Hague, Netherlands (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/beyond-borders/146247-louwman-car-museum-hague-netherlands.html)

Today I visited the Louwman car museum in the Hague, the Netherlands.

This museum is a privately owned by Mr. Louwman, who, amongst others is the owner of the Toyata/Lexus import and dealer network in the Netherlands.

Mr. Louwman has been collecting cars just about all his life. Until a few years ago his museum was in Raamsdonkveer in the South of the Netherlands. In those year we lived pretty close by. I knew his old museum pretty well. I've organized several classic car rallies in which we used it either as starting point or as final destination. Had a nice restaurant and we got free access to the museum for all our members.

Anyway about 5-6 years ago, Louwman announced he wanted a purpose built museum for his ever expanding collection. His old museum became way to small. So he choose The Hague. As chance would have it, we again lived closed by. However, we moved abroad more then five years ago, and the museum only opened a few years ago. So I had never the opportunity. I'm currently staying in the Netherlands in our home nearby the Hague. Today, together with a good friend of mine we visited the museum.

I have visited most car museums in Europe and a few in other places of the world. I must admit this is probably one of the best. Beautiful purpose built building. A truly eclectic collection of cars, bikes and endless amounts of all sort of car paraphernalia/

The cars are displayed magnificently. Every car has a plague with details on the car in both Dutch and English. The displays are distributed over three different floors. There are cars from just about all periods, starting from the very early, near coach type cars, till modern times. From just about all manufactures around the world.

Towards the exit you will find yourself wondering in a replica little street with various period shops! Very nice.

Have a look here for some more information : http://www.louwmanmuseum.nl/?sc_lang=en

I have taken some pictures with my phone, which doesn't do the museum or the collection any justice. But you'll get a good impression, I hope.

One of the very interesting artifacts on display was this odd shaped level you see in one of the pictures below. It is actually a brake tester. The idea was to mount it on the dashboard, drive the car at a certain speed and if the bubble moved forward enough your brakes were fine.

So, if you ever happen to find yourself in the Netherlands and get bored looking at windmills, dykes, tulips, cheese or silly Dutch wearing clogs, drive to The Hague and visit this museum.

Enjoy!

Jeroen

Some more pictures to enjoy:

Thanks for sharing Jeroen. You are one lucky guy :)

Apart for the Nabha Swan car, any other Maharaja cars in this collection?

The Bugatti's look great.

Cheers

KPS

Wow definitely will visit this on my next visit to den hague. Did you take any shots of the museum from the outside. What does the building look like?

Yes, see my picture of the unpainted RollsRoyce. Here are the details on the car: http://www.louwmanmuseum.nl/ontdekke...torpedo-tourer

See the link: http://www.louwmanmuseum.nl

Jeroen

I just visited the museum yesterday. Simply awesome. I will try and post whatever picture Jeroen hasn't posted after I return to India on the 16th of May. In the meantime just a picture of the museum exterior.

Glad you enjoyed it!

I had visited the museum in the first week of May but due to other commitments, I could not upload the pictures earlier. It was an awesome experience and if anybody happens to visit The Hague, it is a must see museum. An amazing collection of cars. The passion of the owner, Mr.Louwman is even seen in the weather cock which sports a race driver. Enjoy the pictures and since the number of pictures is quite large, I will be uploading 30 pictures at a time.

Second set of photos:

Third set of photos:

Final set of images. The bus seen in the last image was supposed to be the first public transport bus in London.

The polished aluminium Rolls Royce is the ex-Nawab Wali-ud-Dowla Phantom I (71DC),

Just came across this very nice video, made by a recent visitor to the museum:

https://youtu.be/EJozqsXleuY