Brussels Museum of Automotive Vehicles
Parc Du Cinquantenaire 1,
1000 Brussels, Belgium
Visited in 2024
Placed opposite to the Brussels Museum of Military History, the Classic Car museum, is just as worth a visit.
It’s about 12 Euros to gain entry, with vehicles from as early as 1910 up until almost the present day.
Scattered amongst the displays are a lot of early 20th century cars, very much like old Model T Fords, but from lesser known European marques, along with a good selection of 1950’s and early 60’s American vehicles too.
Because of that I’ve split the pictures up into time periods to help you if you’re interested in any particular period.
The displays cover two levels, the ground floor allowing excellent viewing of the cars on display, with most allowing for 360 degree walk-round or views.
The upper level is a little more restricted though, with cars lined up next to each other in a lot of cases, which only lets the viewer see the front and part of the sides of some cars.
However, there’s still good views of those exhibits, just no chance of a photo of the back of the vehicle if you need it for reference.
Added to the cars is a nice selection of old motorbikes, again a lot of these are from European manufacturers, and certainly nothing harking from the far east.
After viewing the Military hardware in the museum across the way, the cars seem very bright and almost festive with their colourful livery, certainly a break from warlike subjects.
Most of the cars have descriptions and a short history displayed in front of them, and most of them are printed in three languages.
There’s a small gift shop with various ready-made “display” cars available, and an excellent café to one side as well.
We ended up at this location as an alternative to visiting the WWI museums at Flanders ( Next time, next time ) mainly due to really bad weather and not wanting to trudge about getting wet-through before driving the 400 or so miles home.
Although we hadn’t gone to the Car museum with high expectations, the displays were very good and well worth the visit for anyone with an interest in classic cars, from 1970’s Mercedes to an up to date Audi A8. Not to mention a wood body mock up for an Audi TT and a few concept cars too.
Well worth a visit, parking is very good in the Cinquanteniere area, mainly metered and very reasonable for a capital city – we paid about 2 Euros per hours.
I’d estimate you could spend an easy three hours looking round the displays, and add a little bit more if you wanted to have something to eat in the café.
1900 - 1950
Apologies for not getting the name information on most of these, I was concentrating too much on the variety and quality of the displays, rather than thinking of a future article.
Anyway, lets start off with the early exhibits covering some of the 20th century.
Please note that there are a lot more vehicles on show than I've photographed, this is just giving you a taste of what is there.
I'll add photos of vehicles from later periods in the next couple of weeks.
1929 Studebaker President 8 Model FA
1928 Bentley 3 litre - 4.5 litre
1928 Bentley 3 litre - 4.5 litre
Engine detail
1926 Bugatti 35 A
Apologies, couldn't resist a few shots of this one.
1926 Bugatti 35 A
1926 Bugatti 35 A
Just look at that colour scheme , doesn't it just make you want to paint one up like that and put it in a competition !
1924 Sunbeam Grand Prix
1921 Model T Ford
1921 Model T Ford