Classic shrine: The Loh Collection

By Charlie Calderwood

| 25 Jul 2025

Classic & Sports Car – Classic shrine: The Loh Collection

The majority of the world’s greatest car collections are completely private – and, until 23 July 2023, that was also true of the extraordinary hoard assembled by Friedhelm Loh.

Now, after four decades of collecting classic cars, Loh, owner of multi-billion-euro industrial company Rittal, has converted an old steam-boiler works in Dietzhölztal, Germany, into one of Europe’s most impressive car museums.

The collection started solely with Mercedes-Benz and Porsche models – for a period in the early 1990s, Loh owned one of the world’s great assemblages of Swabian vehicles.

The imposing Bucciali TAV 12 (left) is the only one in existence, with Bentley Speed Six alongside

He decided, however, that it was too limiting to restrict himself to just two manufacturers.

Most of those machines were sold off – although a few highlights remain in the current collection – to allow the creation of a more varied automotive potpourri.

More than two decades later, the cars are finally on public display at the Nationales Automuseum following the full, bespoke conversion of a historic building that nestles among the modern industrial structures of the Rittal business.

This Carrera Panamericana 1951 Ferrari 212 Inter Coupé is one of many Maranello greats in The Loh Collection at the Nationales Automuseum

Entering the permanent exhibition space takes you first into Loh’s pre-war car collection.

Hanging from the ceiling is a Mercedes-Benz 170S Cabriolet, but before you have reached the dangling Merc there is an even older model, the oldest car in the museum: an 1895 Benz Victoria.

Astoundingly, it has had just three owners in its 130 years – it was bought from the Benz family by Henry Ford as he put together his own motor museum in the 1920s.

It stayed in Dearborn until the Ford Motor Company sold it to Loh, during its 2008 difficulties.

This 1898 Daimler is apparently the oldest car registered with the DVLA

Alongside sits a 1906 Lohner-Porsche electric fire engine that still runs, although today with diesel-electric power, and also nearby is an 1898 Daimler 4hp that the museum claims is the oldest UK-registered car.

Beyond these pioneers, the pre-war section is otherwise more focused on the traditionally collectible cars of the late 1920s and early ’30s.

A 1927 Avoins Voisin C14 Lumineuse painted in an Art Deco livery inspired by a contemporary Vogue magazine cover draws the eye, while a Mercedes-Benz SSK Carlton Roadster that is one of just a handful verified by the maker as truly original, a Barnato ‘Blower’ Bentley, a Duesenberg Model J and an Alfa Romeo 8C further confirm that this is a collection for which money has been no object.

Clockwise from top: the three-lane central display includes Citroën DS (left), Jaguar XKSS (middle) and Ford GT40; the 1960 Ferrari 250GT SWB of Wolfgang Seidel; the 1899 Patent 3.5hp was Opel’s first motor car

A second hall filled with pre-war motors contains the unique 1932 Bucciali TAV 12 by Saoutchik, here casually stretching across much of the corridor thanks to its 6m-plus length.

Artefacts of the building’s history are also on display: old industrial cranes remain attached to girders across the ceiling in front of distressed brickwork, while some of the steam boilers are still in place.

Just before entering the next space you’ll find a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770 Grosser. “This is one of the few sold by Mercedes into private hands,” says executive director Florian Urbitsch, “so it hasn’t got as much of a brown history as most.”

The Opel Elektro GT (right) was 50 years ahead of the EV curve

The main hall opens with one of the two changing spaces in the museum; it’s also one of the few places you’ll find cars that aren’t the property of Mr Loh.

At the time of our visit, some of Opel’s heritage collection is on display, including the battery-powered 1971 Elektro GT, the beautiful Genève concept and a much more ordinary, but still rare, Opel Kadett C Caravan, in Automobilclub von Deutschland (AvD) livery.

Previously, the museum has used this spot to display its collection of microcars, which includes the familiar Messerschmitts and Isettas, plus rarities such as the Lloyd Alexander and Gutbrod Superior.

Tatra T77A (right), 4¼-litre Bentley (middle) and Bugatti T57

The centrepiece of the building, however, is the swooping, banked roadway that runs chronologically through many of the museum’s most iconic and rarefied cars, stretching from the late pre-war era to the present day.

A Bugatti Type 57 Atalante starts things off, while a rare 1937 Tatra 77A sits just alongside, looking from another time despite being a contemporary.

Beyond that, the icons flow: BMW 507, Ferrari 250GT SWB, Jaguar XKSS, Lamborghinis 350GT and Miura, Ford GT40, Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 – they are all here.

One with a particularly odd history is Loh’s bright-orange 1975 Lamborghini Countach, a special order to a friend of Ferruccio Lamborghini with a factory-tuned engine, special interior and painted front bumper like the original show car.

It was the only Countach delivered new to Haiti, which at the time had fewer than 100km of paved roads.

Clockwise from top: Corsa Moon concept car imagined Opels in space; this Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport Saoutchik Coupé is one of just a dozen or so built; 2004 Maybach Exelero

Hangovers from Loh’s status as one of the great Porsche and Mercedes-Benz collectors are present, too, such as one of the prototype Porsche 959s; next to that is the first of the seven Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR Roadsters built.

Further Stuttgart connections are made clear just around the corner, where the sole Maybach Exelero sits.

The collection also includes two of the 29 aluminium-bodied Mercedes-Benz 300SLs and the original factory buck from which the cars’ panels were shaped.

DTM legends from BMW (closest) and Mercedes-Benz fly the flag for tin-top racers

Loh is, to put it mildly, also into racing cars.

Icons from Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters include a BMW M3, Mercedes-Benz 190E and Alfa Romeo 155, while just behind them sits DP199, the Aston Martin DB4GT prototype with which Stirling Moss took pole and won the 1959 International Trophy Meeting at Silverstone in the car’s debut race.

Just next to that, on the lower level of the giant car rack that forms the back wall of the museum, is one of the 20 Aston Martin DBR9s built.

Le Mans greats grace the same wall, including Porsches 916 and 956, a Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR and an Audi R10.

Michael Schumacher’s Canadian GP-winning Ferrari F2000 at the front of a display of Formula One racers

The Loh Collection’s Formula One cars could comprise another museum in themselves.

Recently reorganised into the Grand Prix Icons of the Premier Class of Motorsport temporary exhibition (running until the end of 2025), the grouping includes original race-winning cars from the title-taking years of Ayrton Senna, Mika Häkkinen, Kimi Räikkönen and Michael Schumacher, including the most special of Schumacher’s Ferrari F2004s.

Chassis 239 is the car in which the German won eight of the 11 races in which he drove it, and took his seventh championship title.

“If not here, it should really be in the Ferrari museum,” says Florian. “It is one of the single most successful cars in the company’s racing history.”

The Ferrari P3 was Enzo’s revenge on Ford at Daytona

Many of Maranello’s greatest and rarest cars are here – clearly the Prancing Horse was one of the main reasons Loh felt he couldn’t stick to Mercedes and Porsche any more.

The one-off 1952 250S prototype, the first of all the 250-series Ferraris, should interest even those who think they’ve seen everything of Enzo’s progeny.

So, too, the 250GT Speciale built for Princess Lilian de Réthy, with its unique Pininfarina body.

One of the hero cars of the museum is the Ferrari P3, this exact car being one of the three Enzo took to Daytona to get revenge on Ford following the Blue Oval’s 1966 Le Mans victory – they scored a 1-2-3 finish.

The Loh Collection at the Nationales Automuseum in Germany is home to one of the greatest classic car collections

It’s easy to become blind to both the rarity and exceptional nature of the cars in The Loh Collection if you don’t consciously slow yourself down.

In few places do you walk past a 250GT SWB and consider it fairly ordinary.

The money on show boggles the mind, too, in terms of not only the cars, but also the expense that has been put into crafting an astoundingly polished museum out of a once ailing industrial building.

It’s that which separates it from many of Europe’s other great automotive exhibition spaces.

This is a top-tier collection made public, unashamedly focused on the highlights of automotive history rather than the earnest job of telling a representative story.

Images: Max Edleston