Mahymobiles
Mahymobiles (more precisely Musée Communal de l'Automobile Mahymobiles ) is a car museum in Leuze-en-Hainaut, Belgium .
It houses the collection of Ghislain Mahy.
history
Ghislain Mahy, born in Ghent in 1907, opened a used car dealership in 1932 and soon afterwards also founded the first self-drive car rental company in Belgium. He also became a dealer for various brands: Nash , Simca , Fiat . In 1938 the company moved to the former winter quarters of a circus in Ghent.
In 1944, Mahy bought a motorcycle brand FN and a Model T Ford . Both vehicles formed the basis of his collection. Ten years later, the collection already comprised 35 vehicles. The collection grew over the following decades to a total of around 950 vehicles.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the search for a new location that should also be open to visitors began. After a bowling center acquired in Ghent in 1964 could not be used as a museum, an agreement was reached with the municipality of Houthalen in the province of Limburg to build a museum, which was opened in July 1970 as the Provinciaal Automuseum van Houthalen . It was the first automobile museum in Belgium.
The museum in Houthalen was initially closed in 1983 due to economic problems. The museum was then taken over by the family, who had already founded the Ghislain Mahy Autocollection Foundation in 1978, and returned to profitability under the management of Ivan Mahy (Ghislain Mahy's son). When the province drastically increased the rent in 1985, the collection moved to Autoworld, which opened in Brussels in 1986.
In the building there, in which the Brussels Motor Show took place from 1902 to 1934, an exhibition area of 8,000 m² was made available. Around 200 exhibits from the Mahy Collection have been exhibited here to date.
Around 800 other vehicles were still in the winter circus in Ghent when Autoworld opened. In 1996 Ivan Mahy became aware of the building of a former textile factory in Leuze.
After several years of renovation work, the museum in Leuze-en-Hainaut was opened in 2000.
More than 300 vehicles are currently exhibited in 6 halls on 6000 m². The building is surrounded by 5 hectares of parkland.
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 35 ′ 51.4 " N , 3 ° 36 ′ 18.4" E