Musée national de l'automobile de Mulhouse
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| Established | 1978 |
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| Location | Mulhouse, France |
| Type | Automobile museum |
| Collection size | 500 by 98 manufacturers |
| Visitors | 200,000 |
| Director | Emmanuel Bacquet |
| Public transit access | From SNCF Mulhouse take tramway number 1 |
| Website | Official English website |
Cité de l’Automobile, Musée national de l’automobile, Collection Schlumpf is an automobile museum located in Mulhouse, France, and built around the Schlumpf Collection of classic automobiles. It has the largest displayed collection of automobiles and contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of Bugatti motor vehicles in the world.
Brothers Hans and Fritz Schlumpf were Swiss citizens born in Italy, but after their mother Jeanne was widowed, she moved the family to her home town of Mulhouse in Alsace, France. The two brothers, who were later described as having a "Schlumpf obsession", were devoted to their mother.
In 1935 the Schlumpf brothers founded a limited company which focused on producing spun woollen products. By 1940, at the time of the Nazi invasion of France, 34-year-old Fritz was the chairman of a spinning mill in Malmerspach. After World War II, the two brothers devoted their time to obsessively growing their business, and became wealthy.
Fritz loved cars, driven by an abiding love for beautiful automotive engineering. Having wanted a Bugatti since childhood, he bought a Bugatti Type 35B just before the Nazi invasion of France.
After the war he began racing classic cars, but was requested by the textile union to "abstain from this competition which could endanger your life and deprive us of our esteemed director." Schlumpf had been generous to his workers, providing employee trips, installing an employee theater and driving expectant mothers to the hospital in his own car. This was in great contrast to brother Hans, a former banker, who paid the mill workers poorly, docked fifteen minutes off their pay if they were late or signed out a minute or two early, and did not pay bonuses or increments.
With post-war modern 1950s car designs coming on stream, people wanted to exchange their classic 1920s through 1930s cars in for new models. Fritz and Hans began collecting in earnest in the early 1950s, developing a reputation in the trade for only buying the most desirable models. Assisted by Mr. Raffaelli, a Renault dealer from Marseilles and the owner of several Bugattis, they built a Bugatti collection obsessively and quickly:
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