Autoworld Brussels

The last museum I visited while in Europe was Autoworld Brussels. It is a large museum right in the middle of Brussels and has a large collection of interesting cars, including former royal cars of the Belgian royal family.

It was a very nice museum, although not as good as the Louwman Museum. If you’re in Brussels it is worth a visit. For a European museum there is a surprising number of American cars there. There are also some nice pre-war cars.

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The Louwman Museum

During my recent trip to Europe, I went to the Louwman Museum, in The Hague, Netherlands. I cannot recommend this museum highly enough. It is superb. The collection is excellent, it is well laid out, and has good descriptions in English. I’ve included the descriptions in the photo gallery below.

Some highlights:

Rare and interesting cars from before 1900 The largest collection of Benz cars (i.e. before the merger with Daimler) A large collection of Spyker cars Early steam and electric cars, including the first hybrid car, 80 years before the Prius Various ‘celebrity’ owned cars including Churchill, Kaiser Willhelm, […]

The E-Type gets a new set of balls

The E-Type went in for a service this week, and came out with a new set of ball joints for the front suspension. It will also need new front wishbones at some point as a number of shims were needed to get it all put together right, so I’ll keep an eye out for a good deal on those. Next time I’ll also need to have the rubber mounts for the steering rack replaced as well.

As well as the front suspension, the the brake lights are now working – I had them repaired in 2011 when I still lived […]

2013 Volvo V40 D2 Review

After spending two weeks with a Volvo V40 and covering over 3,100 km, I felt like I well and truly knew what this car would be like to own.

The Volvo V40 was owned by Hertz, and I rented it from Oslo, Norway to Brussels, Belgium. Hertz were the only company I could find willing to do this rental.

Overall the car is pretty good. The styling is crisp, and it is different enough that it doesn’t look like everything else on the road. Like many modern cars, the visibility (both front and rear) is pretty poor, and while a […]

Troubleshooting the Retrosound Model 2 in a Citroen DS

The Retrosound Model 2 is finally working in the Citroen DS, and working well!

The issue if you recall was that the unit would reboot any time I turned up the volume, used the bluetooth, etc. I had wired up the radio to the accessory point behind the dashboard, however on closer examination of the DS manuals, this is rated 10A and the Retrosound requires 15A.

To get decent power to the radio, I ran a wire directly from the battery to the Retrosound. There was a rubber grommet in the firewall that I was able to get the wire […]

2013 ACT German car show

I was in Canberra this weekend, so I went along to see the annual German car show (organized by the various ACT clubs including the Mercedes Benz Club ACT), which was held in the carpark near the treasury building. it is normally held on the lawn in front of the lake but poor weather forced the change. Poor weather was also most likely responsible for the smaller than usual turn out of interesting cars, as there were a lot of newer models that you see every day there too.

However, despite the weather there were a few highlights:

The […]

The Volvo Museum

While I was in Sweden, I stopped by the Volvo Museum in Gothenberg. Seemed fitting since I was driving a rental Volvo!

I’ve always been a fan of the P1800 Coupe, which was good to see one in there with some interesting extras we don’t see here including headrests, a fan for the rear passengers etc. There was also a prototype of the rare P1900 sports car, as well as many other key models in Volvo’s history such as the PV544, 164 etc.

What I found interesting was how influential American styling was in the 50s for Volvo. Apparently […]

A visit to Citro Classique / Citro Toon

While I was in Europe, I stopped off at Citro Classique (also known as Citro Toon) in Borculo, about an hour outside Amsterdam. My idea was to make good use of the 60kg of luggage space I had available to me for my return flight to Australia and the use of a rental car to pick up a few things and save the shipping.

Citro Classique provide a great range of different reproduction interior pieces including carpets, door trims, seat covers, headrests, headliners and the like. They are a supplier to the large European websites like Der Franzose, but they […]

Ribe classic

I visited Ribe, yesterday, the oldest city in Denmark. It just so happened that Ribe is the home of a weekly grassroots car show (each Tuesday night, 6-9pm). While my main purpose in Ribe was to see the old town and some of the tourist attractions, it was a lucky coincidence that this show was on, I decided to stop buy and check it out. The weather that day had been pretty bad, but my quick visit was rewarded with a couple of great American muscle cars and as I was leaving and old Renault was just arriving. I like […]