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Automotive Lifestyle
VINTAGE: Auto Museum Opens In Art Deco Style
Mullin collection of French cars from 1920s and 1930s housed with other artworks of the era.
Media Release  |  Posted April 16, 2010   Oxnard, CA
A model dressed in a handmade gown poses near a 1938 Delahaye built by famed coach builder Giuseppe Fignoi, who used a 1938 Delahaye 145 V-12 chassis to produce this show car for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. (Photo: Mullin Automotive Museum)
The Mullin Automotive Museum celebrated its grand opening in style Thursday evening with an ambiance of timless luxury as priceless treasures glowed in soft light and reflected by live jazz.

The evening, like the museum, was a commemoration of the Art Deco design era when exquisite art and magnificent automobiles were elements of an artful, futurist culture. The Oxnard, Ca., museum displays both in a luminous Grand Salon worthy of that extravagant time.

Guests from around the world were treated to a display of more than 100 historic French cars that include examples from Delahaye, Delage, Talbot-Lago, Voisin, Hispano-Suiza and of course, Bugatti. They are wrapped in voluptuous forms from the iconic coachbuilding ateliers of Chapron, Figoni et Falaschi, Gangloff, Vanvooren, Labourdette, Letourneur et Marchand and Saoutchik, among others.

Before the crowds arrived for the opening, the Mullin collection of 100 French vintage cars are shown in the museum's Grand Salon. (Photo: Mullin Automotive Museum)
And while Jean Bugatti’s work was exclusive to the cars created by his father, Ettore Bugatti, he was among the best auto designers of his time and is well-represented, along with priceless artistic creations from his sister, uncle, father and grandfather.

Seven members of the celebrated Bugatti family were included among the opening-night guests. Caroline Bugatti spoke before the crowd, thanking Peter and Merle Mullin for the celebration of her family’s contributions to the world of art and automobiles.

The assembled guests represented a who’s who of the fine-art and collector-car cognoscenti. Open ears topped broad smiles for the insider conversations, and it would have been difficult to find a better location than the Mullin Museum’s elegant Club Bugatti on its mezzanine floor. The Club’s caviar and champagne made for a comfortable visit. Key to The Club’s importance to the festivities was its original Art Deco bar and furnishings, and an impressive view of the Grand Salon where the cars are displayed.

At its far end, the Salon includes a memorable exhibit of a dozen unrestored survivors from the famous Schlumpf Reserve Collection of France’s Alsace Lorraine region. Also, the recently surfaced Lago Maggiore Bugatti Brescia, a beautiful, if tragic, little sports car with a big story.

After more than 70 years at the bottom of the lake on the Italian/Swiss border, the Bugatti Brescia has found its way to the Mullin Museum and, after a stunning exchange, has helped to fund a foundation in the name of Damiano Tamagni, a Swiss youth taken from his family by street violence. His family and Damiano’s scuba-club friends, who had visited the Bugatti when it was still under the lake, were among the special guests at the museum event.

The opening included dramatically sculpted ice bars, beautiful models in era-appropriate couture, and a walk-in, deco-design theater that ran vintage and current film of the art and science from the Art Deco era. Marcel Breuer’s deco-era Wassily chairs provided the seating for the theater. It was, in fact, a restaging of a Parisian Grand Salon.


“It was about memories; many graciously old, some gratefully new, and none to be easily forgotten,” reads a media release from the museum. “That is Peter Mullin’s goal, after all: to use his fine taste and grand vision as a teaching tool for young minds in search of inspiration.

“Though the objects are old, their creative spirit fills the building, making it an accessible time warp and a window into a period when individual designers and craftsmen could change the direction of the future. Much like today.”

For more information about the museum and its collection, see Mullen Automotive Museum.

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