Bonhams will sell the legendary Den Hartogh motor museum collection, including the world’s largest privately owned Ford collection, at a special auction in the Netherlands on June 23, 2018.
The museum boasts hundreds of pre-1950 Fords and Lincolns and dozens of similarly aged mint condition motorcycles.
No reserve on motor museum collection
They will be auctioned without reserve by Bonhams at the museum in Hillegom near Harlem and Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Bonhams Group Head of Motoring, Rupert Banner, said: “This is an extraordinary opportunity, and one which Bonhams is delighted to have been selected to undertake.
“The Den Hartogh collection is legendary throughout Europe, and has been a pilgrimage for Ford aficionados for many years.
“It will be a pleasure to offer this astonishing range of Fords and Lincolns on site at the museum which has so carefully housed them for the past 21 years.”
Anyone can bid for motor museum exhibits
“Every vehicle must be sold and each lot is offered without reserve, meaning that both Ford enthusiasts, and the wider collecting community, will be able to bid for their own piece of the marque’s history.”
The Den Hartogh Museum was founded, funded and curated by Piet Den Hartogh, who fell in love with the marque at a young age being inspired by the Ford trucks used by his father’s transport company.
He bought his first Ford in 1956 and the collection grew rapidly. He sought to amass and show at his museum an example of every single Ford model ever made.
Exhibits now range from the 1903 Model A to more modern campervans, a Canadian police-issue snowmobile, ice cream vans, ambulances and fire engines.
Den Hartogh motor museum ‘must see for motor lovers’
For more than two decades, the Den Hartogh motor museum collection was a must-see for all car lovers, and especially those with an eye for the classic models of yesteryear.
But, the costs of upkeep were extraordinary and museum became unviable, inevitably closing in 2016.
Today, behind closed doors, the incredible motor museum collection comprises more than 200 Ford and Lincoln cars and commercial vehicles, and more than 50 motorcycles, including Harley-Davidsons, BMWs, Royal Enfields and more obscure but no less collectable models.
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