Museums and meets

Madison, February 2013

On 15 and 16 February 2013 RM Auctions sold the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum at Madison, Georgia, a town of about 5,000 people. Every lot found a buyer, the bidders came from 20 countries, and the sale made about US$9.1 million.source 1source 2 The top lot, a 1958 FMR Tg500 “Tiger”, made $322,000, which the sale reports called a world auction record for a microcar.source 1source 3 The museum’s signs and rides sold too: a Rustler Used Cars neon sign and a “Rocket Space Ranger” kiddie ride made $44,850 each.source 1

In terms of its diversity, international interest and prices realized, the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum sale was truly unprecedented. Never before had such a large group of microcars been offered to the public at one time in one location.

Microcars were cheap, used hard and scrapped young, and few survive. Collectors began to gather them in the 1970s and 1980s, while they still cost little; in 1976 Edwin Hammond bought a 1958 Heinkel Kabine as a project with his teenage son, to keep the boy off motorcycles.source 4

Bruce Weiner’s museum at Madison was a not-for-profit, devoted, in its own description, to microcars from the late 1940s to before 1964, with engines of 700 cc or less, many of them of 250 or 50 cc, and with no more than two doors.source 2 It restored many of its cars and painted some in advertising liveries of its own invention: four Goggomobil TL Transporters in PEZ, Coca-Cola, Dubble Bubble and Krispy Kreme colours, which a 2013 report on the auction results said were not necessarily original, made between $92,000 and $172,500 at the sale.source 5source 6source 7source 8source 9 Its 1955 Kleinschnittger F125 went to Los Angeles in August 2001 to be filmed for a Cadillac commercial, first broadcast during the Super Bowl in January 2002.source 10source 11

The museum’s online tour, still readable in archived copies, is much used for production figures, and some of them are its own estimates. For the Lloyd LS 300, a version of the Lloyd LP300, it gives a total of 109,898, almost exactly the 109,878 recorded for the later Lloyd 400, so the later car’s figure appears to have been attached to the earlier one.source 12source 13 The museum’s Peel P50, chassis D535, made $120,750 at Madison, three times its estimate; three years later the same car made $176,000 at RM Sotheby’s Amelia Island sale.source 14source 1source 15 Its history page tells the bubble car’s story as the work of bright engineers, many of them from the former aircraft industry; how far that holds is discussed under aircraft makers.source 2 The museum’s website, in a version updated in 2020 and archived in June 2026, still described a not-for-profit museum open by appointment only; what, if anything, is still shown at Madison has not been found.source 2

In England, Edwin and Jean Hammond went on collecting from 1976, and their museum, at first in Sidcup, moved to their farm in rural Kent. It closed in 2022, when Jean Hammond could no longer keep it going after her husband’s death, and about 47 cars were auctioned on 27 October 2022.source 4 Among them were four surviving examples of the Champion, the only survivor of the two Opperman Stirling cars, an Opperman Unicar and an Allard Clipper.source 4

Jeff Lane opened the Lane Motor Museum in October 2003 in the former Sunbeam Bakery in Nashville, Tennessee, a building of about 12,300 m² (132,000 sq ft). It has more than 550 vehicles, about 150 of them on show at a time, and at weekends it demonstrates some of them, free.source 16 Its microcars run from a re-creation of the Leyat Hélica, built in 2005–⁠09 from Leyat’s plans of 1919, to a 1924 Sima-Violet, a 1926 Mochet Vélocar, a Towne Shopper, a 1969 Willam City and Dale Clifft’s own three-wheeler, the Clifft Commutercycle, the car behind the Dale.source 17source 18source 19source 20source 21source 22source 23 The museum is careful about what a visitor will find.

Please note that the cars or exhibit items shown in this database are part of our collection but may not be on display when you visit.

In Lincolnshire the Bubblecar Museum, at Clover Farm in Langrick near Boston, shows more than 50 microcars, Bonds, Isetta cars, Reliants, Frisky cars and Bambis among them, with dioramas, recreated shops and a café; when checked in October 2026 it opened from Friday to Sunday and on bank holidays through the summer, and offered rides.source 25 It first opened in 2004 beside the A17 at Byard’s Leap and moved to larger premises at Langrick in March 2012, by ITV’s report of the reopening.source 26 Andy Carter, formerly of the museum at Byard’s Leap, has built replicas of the Brütsch Mopetta to order.source 27source 28

At Einbeck, in Lower Saxony, PS.SPEICHER shows its small cars in a building of their own and describes them as the world’s largest collection of historic microcars and small cars; the claim is the museum’s.source 29 At Stopfenheim in Franconia the Bittner brothers of the Fränkische Kleinwagensammlung have built Mopetta replicas; one of them, catalogued as a 1958 Mopetta, made $66,125 at the Weiner sale.source 27source 28

The Toyota Automobile Museum at Nagakute, in Aichi, was open when checked in October 2026.source 30 Its collection includes Japan’s post-war small cars: the Fujicabin Model 5A, shown in the museum’s Cars building, of which, its record says, only 85 were made; a 1969 Honda N360; a Guppy Sports, the open version of the Cony Guppy made by the dealer Aichi Giant; and, kept in store, a Flying Feather.source 31

Its sensible but stripped-down functionality was not understood at that time.

The Deutsches Museum in Munich owns the Messerschmitt KR200 that set 24-hour class records at Hockenheim in 1955, but not the engine that set the records, which was lost while stored at Fichtel & Sachs in Schweinfurt; at least three replicas have been built (more on records and feats).source 32 Whether it is on show has not been confirmed. Its transport museum, the Verkehrszentrum, with some 1,500 exhibits, was open daily when checked, and its archive published an article on the Cyklon Cyklonette in 2009.source 33source 34

The Cité de l’Automobile at Mulhouse, which calls itself the world’s largest automobile collection, keeps the only completed Bugatti Type 68, saved from scrap by the Schlumpf brothers and shown without its engine, and Paul Arzens’s L’Œuf électrique of 1942, on deposit from the Musée des Arts et Métiers.source 35source 36source 37source 38source 39 That museum, in Paris, still shows the Hélica that Gustave Courau drove all over France between 1921 and 1930 and gave to it in 1930 or 1931; he later wrote a book about it.source 40source 41 In The Hague the Louwman Museum shows a Bédélia BD2.source 42

In Britain, Beaulieu’s National Motor Museum keeps a Reliant Supervan III, and the Science Museum Group holds a Bond Minicar of 1950, a Mark A kept at the group’s site at Wroughton.source 43source 44source 45 On the Isle of Man the Peel Transport Museum heard in 2004 that a 1962 Peel P50 was for sale in Cheshire, raised £10,500 with the help of the Public Lottery Trustees and the Manx Heritage Foundation, and brought it back to the island.source 46 In Bonn the Haus der Geschichte shows an Isetta, a car often called one of the symbols of West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder, the post-war economic miracle.source 47

In Denmark, Museum Østjylland at Randers, the town where the CityEl was first built, runs an exhibition of 15 of them, Ellert – elektriske drømme, from 8 February 2025 to 18 October 2026, with the first car built and the last.source 48source 49 In Los Angeles the Petersen Automotive Museum has had a yellow prototype of the Dale since 1994, and in 2018 it added “Serial One”, a pre-production Honda N600.source 50source 51

The clubs keep the best production records. The Bond Owners’ Club’s figures for the Bond Minicar and its successors come from Bond’s own production records.source 52 The register of the Scootacar, the Scootacar Register, has records of 150 cars, about 120 of them still in existence.source 53 The register of the invalid carriages, the Invalid Carriage Register, which keeps the history of makers such as Invacar, held exhibitions at the Museum of Liverpool in 2018 and at Preston Park and Beamish in 2019.source 54source 55

In America the club of the King Midget, the International King Midget Car Club, has met for an annual jamboree since 1991; the club holds the King Midget trademark and sells replica plans, and its 2027 jamboree is announced for 11–14 August in Tennessee.source 56source 57source 58 The club of Crosley owners, the Crosley Automobile Club, which estimated from serial numbers that fewer than 600 Crosley Farm-O-Road utility vehicles were built, holds its national meet at Wauseon, Ohio.source 59source 60

In Catalonia the Clàssic Motor Club del Bages has run the Trobada Internacional de Microcotxes at Manresa since 1989.source 61

Des de la nostra primera trobada de microcotxes el 1989 a Manresa, som referència al sud d’Europa.

Bruce Weiner bought the only F.G.L. Alicante at the eighth meet, in 2001.source 62 The 11th meet, held on 9–10 June 2007, admitted up to 125 microcars shorter than 3 m (9 ft 10 in), built between 1940 and 1964 and with fewer than four cylinders; its programme was a gymkhana, a town parade and a concours d’élégance.source 63 The 20th, in 2026, marked the 70th anniversary of Manresa’s own microcar, the PTV 250.source 61

Elsewhere the cars come home for anniversaries. In August 2024 a 60th-anniversary rally, held by the Manx Transport Heritage Museum, sent P50s, Peel Trident cars and Vikings touring the Isle of Man.source 64 At Rétromobile in Paris in 2019, 14 of the 18 surviving Bédélias were gathered for an exhibition.source 65source 66 John Meadows, grandson of Henry Meadows, drove a Frisky at the Goodwood Revival in 2006.source 67 Bruce Weiner, after his own sale, had only one complaint.

My only disappointment of the weekend is that the show had to come to an end.