Welcome To The One-Stop Guide To Motor Museums!

I have been fascinated by motoring history since my childhood in Hungary. While Hungary is not known for its auto industry, I was fortunate enough to find early German magazines, such as Allgemeine Automobil Zeitung and Der Motorwagen in a local library. Eventually, this led to my first research trip to the Deutsches Museum in Münich at the age of 17. By the age of 24, I was an editor of a classic car magazine in Hungary, an experience that in reality lasted for two years but had long-lasting effects on my career. In 2000 I became a part of the award-winning team of authors, who compiled the Beaulieu Encyclopaedia of the Automobile.

Since 2010 I have been a lecturer at the Óbuda University in Budapest, Hungary where I teach motoring history in a post-graduate classic car restoration course.

Between 2013-2018 I completed my PhD at the University of Leicester, School of Museum Studies.  Titled “How the motor museum saw the automobile?”, it charts the change in curatorial practices regarding the display of automobiles in German and Austrian museums in the 20th century. You can read it here.

In 2019 an abridged version of a chapter from my thesis appeared in the “The Routledge Companion to Automobile Heritage, Culture and Preservation”.

I have been a consultant to the Kaáli Autó-Motor Múzeum, a Hungarian private museum since 2017. I worked on the exhibition concept, participated in the vehicle selection process and wrote all the information sheets for the 140+ cars and motorcycles.

Between 2017 and 2020 I was a part-time associate at the Hungarian Museum of Transport, Science and Technology. In my capacity, I assisted in overhauling the inventory of the archive and catalogued over 120,000 negatives, photos and slides.

Additionally, on behalf of the Museum of Transport, I have organised an exhibition on the 1912 Budapest-Constantinapole Touring Race which was shown in Istanbul, Sofia, Bucharest and Budapest. An accompanying book on the history of the race was published in 2021.

I was also involved in another exhibit at the Museum featuring the life and works of the Korbuly-family, which led to the set-up of a virtual exhibition.

Since 2020 I have been the editor and publisher of Rare & Unique Vehicles, an English-language quarterly classic car magazine, which has been well received by classic car fans all over the world.

In 2021 I became an archivist for a German private collector. Based on his archival materials I have developed a website on the history of Gebrüder Mappes, a local car dealer. This was followed by a 272-page, hard-cover book on the history of Standard and Gutbrod, the venture-making enterprises of Stuttgart-based Wilhelm Gutbrod between 1926-1954. The Gutbrod exhibition organised for the unveiling of the book at the 2022 RetroClassics Show in Stuttgart yielded an award from the organisers.

Since early 2022 I have been residing in Halstead, near Sudbury. My intention is to help local museums and collections. The United Kingdom was the first country where a motor museum was opened in 1912. This short-lived museum inspired many others. Today there are over 80 publicly open collections on the British Isles.