1914 Bugatti Type 17 Torpedo, Cité de l’Automobile, Mulhouse, Alsace, France
Image by Billy Wilson Photography
"The Type 13 was the first true Bugatti car. Production of the Type 13, and later Types 15, 17, 22, and 23, began with the company’s founding in 1910 and lasted through 1920, with 435 examples produced. Most road cars used an eight-valve engine, though five Type 13 racers had 16-valve heads, some of the first ever produced. The road cars became known as pur-sang ("thoroughbred") in keeping with Ettore Bugatti’s feelings for his designs.
The car was brought back after World War I with a multivalve engine to bring fame to the marque at Brescia. The production Brescia tourer also brought in much-needed cash.
Automobiles Ettore Bugatti was a French car manufacturer of high-performance automobiles, founded in 1909 in the then-German city of Molsheim, Alsace by the Italian-born industrial designer Ettore Bugatti. The cars were known for their design beauty and for their many race victories. Famous Bugattis include the Type 35 Grand Prix cars, the Type 41 "Royale", the Type 57 "Atlantic" and the Type 55 sports car.
The death of Ettore Bugatti in 1947 proved to be the end for the marque, and the death of his son Jean Bugatti in 1939 ensured there was not a successor to lead the factory. No more than about 8,000 cars were made. The company struggled financially, and released one last model in the 1950s, before eventually being purchased for its airplane parts business in 1963.
In 1987, an Italian entrepreneur bought the brand and revived it as a builder of limited production exclusive sports cars based in Modena. In 1998, the Volkswagen Group bought the rights to the Bugatti marque and set up a subsidiary based back in Molsheim, Alsace.
Cité de l’Automobile, Musée national de l’automobile, Collection Schlumpf is an automobile museum located in Mulhouse, France, and built around the Schlumpf Collection of classic automobiles. It has the largest displayed collection of automobiles and contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of Bugatti motor vehicles in the world.
Brothers Hans and Fritz Schlumpf were Swiss citizens born in Italy, but after their mother Jeanne was widowed, she moved the family to her home town of Mulhouse in Alsace, France. The two brothers, who were later described as having a "Schlumpf obsession", were devoted to their mother.
In 1935 the Schlumpf brothers founded a limited company which focused on producing spun woollen products. By 1940, at the time of the German invasion of France, 34-year-old Fritz was the chairman of a spinning mill in Malmerspach. After World War II, the two brothers devoted their time to obsessively growing their business, and became wealthy.
Mulhouse (pronounced [myluz]; Alsatian: Milhüsa or Milhüse, [mɪlˈyːzə]; German: Mülhausen; meaning mill house) is a subprefecture of the Haut-Rhin department in the Grand Est region of Eastern France, close to the Swiss and German borders. With a population of 109,443 in 2017 in the commune and 285,121 inhabitants in 2016 in the urban area, it is the largest city in Haut-Rhin and second largest in Alsace after Strasbourg. Mulhouse is the principal commune of the 39 communes which make up the communauté d’agglomération of Mulhouse Alsace Agglomération (m2A, population 272,712).
Mulhouse is famous for its museums, especially the Cité de l’Automobile (also known as the Musée national de l’automobile, ‘National Museum of the Automobile’) and the Cité du Train (also known as Musée Français du Chemin de Fer, ‘French Museum of the Railway’), respectively the largest automobile and railway museums in the world. An industrial town nicknamed "the French Manchester", Mulhouse is also the main seat of the Upper Alsace University, where the secretariat of the European Physical Society is found.
Alsace (/ælˈsæs/, also US: /ælˈseɪs, ˈælsæs/; French: [alzas]; Low Alemannic German/Alsatian: ‘s Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is a cultural and historical region in Eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2017, it had a population of 1,889,589.
Until 1871, Alsace included the area now known as the Territoire de Belfort, which formed its southernmost part. From 1982 to 2016, Alsace was the smallest administrative région in metropolitan France, consisting of the Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin departments. Territorial reform passed by the French Parliament in 2014 resulted in the merger of the Alsace administrative region with Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine to form Grand Est. Due to protests it was decided in 2019 that Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin would form the future European Collectivity of Alsace in 2021.
Alsatian is an Alemannic dialect closely related to Swabian and Swiss German, although since World War II most Alsatians primarily speak French. Internal and international migration since 1945 has also changed the ethnolinguistic composition of Alsace. For more than 300 years, from the Thirty Years’ War to World War II, the political status of Alsace was heavily contested between France and various German states in wars and diplomatic conferences. The economic and cultural capital of Alsace, as well as its largest city, is Strasbourg, which sits right on the contemporary German international border. The city is the seat of several international organisations and bodies." – info from Wikipedia.
During the summer of 2018 I went on my first ever cycling tour. On my own I cycled from Strasbourg, France to Geneva, Switzerland passing through the major cities of Switzerland. In total I cycled 1,185 km over the course of 16 days and took more than 8,000 photos.
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