Sunday 4 October, shortly before 11 a.m. On the cobbles of the Cinquantenaire esplanade, cars are parked right up to the foot of the colonnade: a red Fiat Coupé, a yellow 911 Carrera, a black 356, convertibles with their tops down. The mackerel sky of early morning has given way to blue. Autoworld is turning forty.
For the occasion, the Brussels museum gave its Cars & Coffee an anniversary edition. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the esplanade was open to classic cars and youngtimers at least twenty years old, brought by their owners; the museum expected around three hundred, and a jury handed out its Best of Show awards. Inside, the day carried on with guided tours and activities for families.
A partner of Autoworld since June, our team was there. The museum hosted its guests for brunch under the arcades of the Cinquantenaire, facing the cars on the esplanade: a chance to catch up with its teams and its other partners, and to talk cars with the people who drive them.
Two guests that came by truck
For the day, Autoworld had added three cars to its anniversary exhibition: a Ferrari Monza SP2, a Ferrari Daytona SP3 and a Bugatti from one of its past exhibitions. The two Ferraris herald the next one, devoted to the marque in Belgium.
They arrived a few days earlier in one of our enclosed trucks. The red Monza with its yellow stripe on the upper deck, the black Daytona below, the truck pulled up at the museum door with its sides open; a silver car cover was waiting at the foot of the wall. On Sunday, they stood side by side in the hall.
Both cars belong to Ferrari's Icona series, built in limited numbers. The Monza SP2 is a barchetta: no roof, no windscreen. On the road, it would take head-on everything thrown up by the vehicles ahead. It is a car that travels enclosed, whatever the forecast.
Forty years, around a hundred exhibitions
Autoworld opened its doors in September 1986, in the great south hall of the Cinquantenaire. More than 350 vehicles were on display, most of them from Ghislain Mahy's collection and largely pre-war. Since then, the museum has staged around a hundred temporary exhibitions, two a year, each devoted to a marque, a model or a country, and shown more than 2,000 cars. It welcomed 245,000 visitors last year, four times as many as ten years ago.
The anniversary exhibition, "Autoworld 40 Years – Looking Back to the Future", runs until 13 December. It brings back fifteen cars, two motorcycles and a Vespa, each shown with the exhibition where it was once seen: a Bugatti Type 35, a Lamborghini Miura, a Muntz Jet, James Bond's Toyota 2000GT Targa, the "flying" Citroën DS, and the Porsche 918 Spyder, back because it was the car the public asked for most.
More than 2,000 cars on display means as many cars that came from someone's garage, and went back to it.
Happy birthday to the whole Autoworld team.
Lending a car to an exhibition, or taking it to a meet? Our events page describes how we work, and the quote form takes your dates and addresses.
Your questions about car meets
Do you transport cars to a meet such as a Cars & Coffee?
Yes. Give the venue, the date and the expected arrival time in your quote request: the car is delivered on site, then brought back home.
Why transport a recent car in an enclosed truck?
Because it arrives as it left: sheltered from road spray, weather and onlookers. For a barchetta with no windscreen, like the Monza SP2, it is the only way to make the trip without damage.
