Change Over - How Karma Caught Up with a Bugatti Collector

Words by Caster & Camber

The world of classic car collecting is about as shady and underhanded as the art world or any other collectibles. But there are just some stories which have too many red flags.

Meet our protagonist - Fritz Schlumpf. An Italian born, who along with his brother owned a successful textile company.

Image: Schlumpf Bugatti Collection

Fritz was mad on cars. In 1928 at the age of 22, he got a Bugatti and he was hooked. This was a spring board to start gathering others, ultimately sealing his and his brothers downfall.

In 1957 Fritz decided to open a museum not far from Bugatti in a town called Mulhouse in the Alsace region of France.

He had the space, now he needed the cars. For that, he reached out to British Bugatti Owners Club registrar Hugh Conway. With Conways list, Schlumpf basically had an book of collectors, dealers and shady characters to contact to get hold of cars. One of the names on that list would John W Shakespeare.

Image: Schlumpf Bugatti Collection

Shakespeare was an American Bugatti collector who had a stash of Bugattis hidden just outside of Hoffman, Illinois.

Schlumpf approached Shakespeare with an offer of $70,000 to which Shakespeare told him to kick rocks for anything less than $100,000. To get a better view on price, Schlumpf hired Bugatti expert Bob Shaw to inspect the 30 cars, he said they were all in pretty poor condition. With that information, Schlumpf offered Shakespeare more money and they settled on $85,000. Remember this is 1961… that’s around $750,000 today. All of this included shipping the cars to France.

All of the Bugattis were loaded onto a train bound for New Orleans before being loaded onto a ship. The cars arrived in La Harve, France and the Schlumpf brothers announced that by 1965 their museum would be open.

Image: Schlumpf Bugatti Collection

That didn’t happen. From that moment on, the tables turned on the brothers. Ok, so the Schlumpf brothers had sort of been shady and dickheads before this whole thing. But, this was a new level.

By the 70s, the French wool industry had collapsed and a series of industrial actions because of shady business dealings meant the brothers fled to Switzerland. Leaving the cars behind to find their way into a public museum.

Oh, the irony.