If you’re a car nut, just imagine being let loose in a huge showroom full of all sorts of classic and vintage cars. Every colour, every make, all polished and ready to go. All you need do is to remove the plastic from your wallet and try to remember the PIN number. A bit like being let loose in a sweet shop at the age of five with your pocket money burning a hole in your pocket. That’s exactly how the photos from Düsseldorf struck me the first time. A giant sweet shop.
Actually the place is a gloriously restored locomotive turntable shed called Remise Düsseldorf. Let me explain, not the Düsseldorf bit silly, the Remise bit. The literal translation is a ‘coach house’ in this case the coaches were trains. There are two of these Remises in Germany, the other in Berlin. The brief and concept is simple. Create a total out and out car fest, something car nuts can gorge on.
There is everything from the spectacular circular showroom to workshops, dealers, conference facilities and restaurants. In the middle is a construction of glass boxes rather like a pile of transparent containers housing cars in storage. But instead of being hidden away in a secret warehouse under dust covers these cars are on display for us to enjoy. The whole place is a giant open plan glazed automotive temple.
After that description I guess some will think they’ve died and gone to automotive heaven. Not far off the truth as far as I can see from the photos. Apart from the wheels what I found most interesting is the variety. People have such varied tastes and such different aspects of cars pique their interest. Just as well because without that diversity the world would be a tedious place indeed.
We’ve picked a few of the more uncommon dreams for you to look at just because they’re not something you might run into on a Sunday afternoon in Palmanova. On the other hand Majorca is packed full of unusual classics and interesting cars so you never know. However there are a couple of items here which you are very, very unlikely to see, I’ll let you work out which ones those are. Answers on a postcard please.
Whilst as petrolheads we all focus on different cars there is one thing we all have in common and that every car nut hankers after. And we all agree on this quite precisely. We dream of owning such a place, albeit on a much smaller scale, let’s say 30-50 cars as a starter. We all bemoan our lack of garaging and blame it on why we have so few cars. Can you imagine, what a lot of spoilt brats we are. Spoilt, moi? Enjoy these photos and dream. And because Gaston took so many pics of rare motors we will show you more rarities from Remise in next week’s Tuesday issue.
The Classic Car Club at www.ccc-mallorca.com. Driving Mallorca at www.drivingmallorca.es & on Facebook. The American Car Club on Facebook.