Heinkel Scooter Project: Charlies Auto Museum, Arthur's Seat, Victoria 2022

Monday, November 21, 2022

Charlies Auto Museum, Arthur's Seat, Victoria 2022

In 2016 we visited Charlie's Auto Museum in Arthur's Seat in the Mornington Penninsula while we were driving our DKW to the Bay to Birdwood rally in Adelaide. It was a great museum with a very interesting collection. You can check out the photos here:
https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2018/03/charlies-auto-museum.html

We were in Mornington Penninsula again in October 2022 so we decided to pop in and have another look. Charlie is 94 years old now and is still manning the counter. He loves talking about cars and we had another good chat about how things are going. Some cars that were there in 2016 have been sold now. It's an amazing collection though that includes a lot more than cars and motorcycles. There is old household machinery, ship and aircraft models, and automobilia.

Welcome to the museum - CV-1 personal transporter, car of the future.

Dutch DAF and British Reliant Regal three-wheeler

Some really weird trike

Flying Corvette. It's good to see that in this age of diversity that there is nothing holding dogs back from getting their pilot's license.

A Czech Czseta scooter aka the Iron Pig and a Velocette LE.

A cute little Subaru 360. What a beauty. Few of these have survived as they're rather thin skinned and suffered terribly from rust.

A very interesting little tractorette. You see a lot of these type of machines in France in the post war period. This is powered by a small, single cylinder air-cooled industrial motor.

Fibreglass wonders - a Bond Bug

Bricklin SV-1

One Charlie's favourite cars, Tatra T613

One of my favourites, the De Soto Airstream, first year of production.
https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2016/03/1934-chrysler-airflow-first-modern-car.html

Jawa motorcycles and mopeds. The Czech Jawa sold quite well in Australia.
https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2022/07/1950-jawa-350-motorcycle.html

Kitchen and household appliances of yesteryear.

Radios and other stuff

MG TC

Some of the enormous ship models in the museum. The Titanic is some 2 metres long.

Sunbeam

This is a Volkswagen demonstrator chassis to train mechanics.

Ship modes - Graf Spee and Tirpitz - and pedal cars.

Another star of the collection is this Tatra T603.

How many old cars, bikes, machines, engines are found

In the early 2000s a group of Germans drove a Trabant around the world. The trip ended in Australia - quite literally - when one of the Trabants was rear-ended by a truck. The car was abandoned as unsalvageable and ended up in the museum. In the front is a French Solex moped.

A bizarre little off-road runabout

Fiat and Piaggio Ape

A real rarity in Australia - Wartburg 311. A lovely car.

And the iconic Australian built Goggomobil Dart.

And its 'big brother' the Goggomobil TS300 in front of a Reliant Tricar delivery van.

American postal van

Plymouth

Studebaker Avanti

The Australian Trabant - the Lightburn Zeta, one of the worst cars ever built.

Nash

Invacar. These were offered to disabled persons in the UK. They were built from 1948 to 1977. In 2003 the British government recalled all Invacars and had them scrapped. As these were only consigned to their 'owners' and not owned by them, few cars escaped destruction.