It was 25 years ago when Michael Fröhlich decided to celebrate his 50th birthday in the year 2000. What he chose to do was to purchase 50 vintage vehicles from the year of his birth, 1950. He removed their oil and anything else they contained that could pollute the environment, and then he placed these cars and trucks in a 20,000-square foot forested setting close to his home in Mettmann, Germany, which is near Düsseldorf in the western part of the country.
While these vehicles were in good, restored condition at the time, they are long past that point, having naturally decayed over time as they sit outdoors. This means that this is not your typical impressive celebrity car collection full of vintage cars in pristine, garage queen condition. Rather, it is a setting in which you can see how the inexorable forces of nature have affected these cars overtime, and also how the vehicles we drive will eventually be reclaimed by those forces. Driving this point home, some of the cars even have trees growing through them.
The 1950-vintage vehicles on display in Fröhlich’s outdoor park include cars from all over the world. There are a British Jaguar XK120 and Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, a German Porsche 356 and BMW, an Australian Holden, some of which had Chevy bowtie badges, an American Cadillac, Buick, and Chevrolet, a French Citroen, a Moskvitch from the former Soviet Union, and others. In addition to the cars, you can also see a piece of the Berlin Wall, along with motorcycles, scooters, an airplane and a horse-drawn carriage.
Other facts about this classic car graveyard
Michael Fröhlich, who has created this unique environment for these very special 50 deteriorating vehicles from his birth year, also owns a conventional classic car dealership. It goes by the name of Fantastische Fahrzeuge, which translates to Fantastic Vehicles in English. At the time of this writing, Fröhlich’s dealership had 151 cars up for sale, ranging from an AC Cobra 427 to a 1964 Volkswagen van, and if they haven’t already, many of those cars will become classics.
The 50 vehicles in Michael Fröhlich’s outdoor classic car graveyard collection are located on private property, which is open to the public every Sunday from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. The admission fee is 20 Euros for photographers and 10 Euros for non-photographers, or about $23 and $11, respectively. If you find yourself in the general vicinity, it is definitely worth a visit. Other visitors have recommended parking across the road at the Neanderthal Museum, since the outdoor classic car graveyard, rather ironically, has no provision for parking.
