Taking One Last Stroll Through the Mullin Automotive Museum's Amazing Car Collection

What makes—or, we must now say, made — the Mullin Automotive Museum unique was not just the chance to see some of the world's most exclusive cars, but to get as close to them as you might at your local Friday-night cruise-in.

"Some people felt it was foolhardy," said Merle Mullin, museum director and widow of founder Peter Mullin, as she walked us through the collection one final time just days before it closed. "[Some] people were horrified. But this was Peter's idea. He said, 'I don't want cars behind glass. I don't want stanchions around them.' And [museumgoers] have never violated our trust. We've never had an issue."

Sadly, the opportunity to get up close and personal with these rare and rarefied cars is now gone: The Mullin Automotive Museum, where much of the couple's collection was on display, closed its doors in February 2024, following Peter's death the previous September.

The Mullin Museum's Roots

"Peter was a wonderfully successful businessman," recounted Ken Gross, automotive historian and member of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance's selection committee. "But he was an artist at heart, and his cars reflect the artistry of French coachwork in that era. He loved the best of French cars, so he had Voisons, Talbot-Lagos, Bugattis —in fact, I think he had the largest Bugatti collection outside of France. He appreciated the cars mechanically, he liked to race, but above all, he loved the artistry of custom coachwork, and that's what he put on display."

The cars in the collection claimed multiple concours wins, including Best in Class and Best of Show at Pebble Beach and Amelia Island. This past August, just a month before Peter Mullin's death, he and Merle drove across the Pebble Beach winner's podium as their 1939 Delahaye Type 165 Figoni et Falaschi Cabriolet won its class.

We were surprised to learn that Peter Mullin, whom sister publication Automobilemagazine named its Man of the Year in 2015 , came to car collecting relatively late in life, just 20 years ago. His interest in art, however, went back to his youngest days. Merle recounted that Peter wanted to be an artist until he took a summer job working for a very talented fine-art printmaker.

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"That man was always saying, 'Would you mind waiting another week? I think I'm going to get a check from something I sold,'" Merle told us. "Peter figured, 'This guy's not doing very well, and I'll never be as talented as he is,' so he changed his major from art to economics, thinking if he could get enough money to pursue his artistic passions, he wanted to be a sculptor. These cars, in Peter's mind, are rolling sculptures."

An Accidental Start to Car Collecting

The path to the Mullin Museum began with a chance request from a neighbor who asked to use the Mullins' Paul Williams-designed house as the backdrop for a photo shoot of one of his cars.

"[Peter] thought it was a Ferrari or something," Merle said. "The gate opened, and in came this swooping, emerald green, shiny, voluptuous—Peter described it as 'voluptuous'—postwar Delahaye. Peter had never seen a car like that, with these big fenders, designed by Carrosserie Figoni et Falaschi, who designed many of the cars that Peter loved. He asked a lot of questions. He was a hugely curious man. He started to delve into what these cars were about and where they were from.

"He said [to the neighbor], 'If you ever have a car you don't want to own altogether, and you would like someone to help you with it, call me.' Twenty-four hours later, [the neighbor] called him. Peter acquired five or six cars with this man. That launched him. Before that, Peter thought he was in heaven when he got a Ferrari. He didn't know these cars existed."

A New Life for an Old Car Museum

Peter Mullin excavated his Brentwood home's garden to house his cars, but space evaporated as the collection grew. Merle encouraged him to buy a warehouse in the Culver City area where she had a studio. Soon, however, they received a call from the window of car collector and Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler. According to Merle, "She said, 'Peter, you must have this building,'" referring to the former site of Chandler's Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife in Oxnard, about an hour outside of L.A., where Chandler displayed classic cars, motorcycles, and his big-game-hunting trophies. "[Peter] liked Otis Chandler a lot. He said, 'I'll remake it into a French car museum. '"

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The Mullin Automotive Museum opened in 2010.

"I thought it was going to be just another building with cars lined up," Gross said. "Instead, Peter transformed it into the Paris Salon of the early 1930s, complete with the signs and the arches and everything."

"The inspiration for this building is the Grand Palais in the heart of Paris," Merle said. "That was where the elite would come to peruse the finest cars of the era." To that end, Peter had the support columns wrapped in riveted cladding and hung period-correct signs listing the names of the marques on display. The railings around the upper level are re-creations of the work of Edgar Brandt, a famous Art Deco iron worker.

"It wasn't enough for Peter to just do a museum," Gross said. "He re-created the era by building this setting. We could never go back in time, but Peter helped you do that and appreciate the cars the way they were shown in their original era."

Beyond Cars and Art Deco

Whereas Chandler surrounded the cars with stuffed wildebeest and lions, Mullin surrounded them with Art Deco furniture and artifacts. Ettore Bugatti, whose cars Peter was particularly smitten with, came from a family of artists, and the Mullin housed what Merle believes is the largest collection of Carlo Bugatti furniture in private hands.

"He realized these cars were not just independently beautiful things, but part of a whole culture of art and design that expressed the Art Deco era," Merle continued. "We traveled the world together, always digging around, looking for Art Deco. Because Art Deco permeated the entire world. We found amazing treasures in Cairo and Budapest, in Paris, of course, which was the center of it. We had many trips to Buenos Aires. When people fled Paris and Hitler, they brought with them their Art Deco treasures, and [many] moved to South America for a safe haven."

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However, the collection wasn't limited to the Art Deco era. Its earliest vehicles were horse-drawn carriages from the 19th century, and standing guard at the Museum's door was a soaring red Citroën DS body, a re-creation of Citroën's early auto-show display.

"Peter really liked Citroën," Gross said, "particularly custom-bodied Citroëns. You don't necessarily think of DS19s and DS21s as having custom designs. There weren't many, and he had plenty of them. It was a pleasant surprise to go in there and see cars from the 1960s and '70s with custom coachwork."

Most of the cars in the Mullin collection boasted outstanding provenance, but if a vehicle appealed to the Mullins, it went into the collection—even if it wasn't French, like the Czech 1938 Tatra Type 87. "That's not a rare car," Merle said, "but it's a special car, and there are very few of them in America. You'd be hard-pressed to find them in museums."

Perfect Restorations and Imperfect Originals

The restorations were concours-quality, with flawless sheetmetal, ocean-deep paint finishes, and no expense spared for authenticity. Merle pointed out the 1935 Voisin C-25 Aerodyne, which won Best in Show at Pebble Beach in 2011, its interior upholstered with a design so complicated it defies description.

"A friend tracked down the looms in the Northwest of France that were used to weave this fabric in the first place," she said. "We found tiny scraps, and we know what the coloration was. The looms were all destroyed and dilapidated, and we rebuilt them. We found the patterns, which were cards with holes in them. You could not weave this without understanding that pattern. The end result is a gorgeous, hand-woven woolen fabric, just as it was executed in 1938."

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Not all the cars were restored to showroom condition; in fact, many were not restored at all but were displayed in as-found condition, most notably the Schlumpf Reserve Collection. Peter acquired this treasure trove of 62 significant French cars in 2008 and put them on rotating display at the Mullin. The cars—"undiluted by modern restoration methods," as the museum's display said—provided an unparalleled historic record of prewar creations.

Also displayed in its unrestored state: a 1925 Bugatti Type 22 that spent 75 years at the bottom of Lake Maggiore in Switzerland, partially eroded by the waters and partially preserved by the mud. It was the only car in the museum with ropes around it, but as docent and longtime automotive PR man Dave Buchko pointed out, "In any other museum, that car would be, and probably should be, in a hermetically sealed tank. Peter wanted people to get up close to it."

The Mullin Collection's Future

What will happen to the collection now that the Mullin Museum is closed?

"If I were 25 years younger, I would take this on and run it," Merle told us. Instead, four of the cars have been donated to the Petersen Automotive Museum in L.A. Some will be auctioned, but the bulk of the collection will remain intact. The museum wasn't ready to provide official details, but Merle gave us an overview.

"The way Peter looked at cars, and I share and embrace his point of view, is that these are treasures, but not treasures for us to own and to do with what we want. He viewed us as custodians who have an obligation to preserve these cars for future generations. So the top 47 cars in the collection will go to the next custodian. These cars will be protected and taken care of and shared."

Will they be shared in the same way Peter Mullin specified? We can only hope, but the collecting world will be hard-pressed to find anyone as eager to let the public experience these automobiles the way the Mullins did. On the last day of its operation, the museum had a full house, as fans and friends came for what might have been their final chance to get up close and personal with so many of the world's most exclusive collector cars.

"I'm very sad to see the Mullin Automotive Museum go," Gross said. "It's a loss for car collectors and hobbyists, because we won't see anything like that again."