Taking the stairs, the next hall takes us to a more diverse selection of vehicles. One of the earliest is the first bicycle using ball bearings patented in 1869 by Jules Pierre Suriray, a Parisian bicycle mechanic.
This velocipede is accompanied by 19th-century motorcycles powered by steam (the 1871 steam velocipede designed by Louis-Guillaume Perreaux) and the first petrol bike (from 1897, designed by Félix Millet).
The other island groups two-wheelers from the 20th century, peaking at over 200kmph. The white bicycle belonged to José Meiffret, a French cyclist who set a world record of 204 kmph pedalling behind a Mercedes-Benz 300SL on the German Autobahn in 1962.
The other side featured horse carriages, including a Cabriolet designed by Jean-François Chopard and a Spider Phaéton.
There are a few pre-war rarities on this floor (like the 1900 Renault C), but the real deal is the Ferrari from the ‘60s. The 1949 Ferrari 166 mm Barchetta delivered the first victory for Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and also won the Targa Florio and the Mille Miglia races.
Though the Scuderia Ferrari had a noble pedigree as it served as a factory team for Alfa Romeo. Nevertheless, the 166 featured a lot of novelties and signalled the rise of a new player beyond the pre-war racing teams that still dominated the early post-war years.
The 166 was the very first road car from Ferrari, unveiled in 1949. It was quite a sensation back then with its high-end 1.5 L V12 engine (designed by Gioacchino Colombo) and super-modern pontoon design.
The last major exhibit on this floor was a mock-up of the 2016 Venturi VBB-3, a world record-breaking electric car. Venturi was a Monaco-registered sports car manufacturer established in 1984 by French engineers Claude Poiraud and Gérard Godfroy. They came up with quite a few memorable Grand Tourers throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, but the company did not survive the millennia.
The Venturi brand restarted operations in 2001 to develop electric prototypes. The first project car was inaugurated in 2009 with the title ‘Jamais Contente’ to honour the memory of the vehicle used by Camille Jentazy in 1899 (more on that a bit later). 110 years later, the Venturi VBB-2, developed in partnership with Ohio State University, reached 487 km/h on the salty lake of Bonneville.
In 2016, Venturi Automobiles developed a new speed record vehicle, the Venturi VBB-3. Its massive 2 200 kW (3 000 hp) engine drove all four wheels. The car was piloted by Roger Schroer and reached 549 km/h, setting a new FIA record that still stands!
The company did not stop there, as the name is still worn by one of the Formula E teams since 2014. They currently bear the name ROKiT Venturi Racing and are piloted by Edoardo Mortara and Lucas di Grassi for the 2021/2022 season.
The remaining time we spent with the permanent exhibition. Most of them are pre-war (even pre-WW-I) cars, and the only post-war car in those chambers was a Gregoire Sport coupé.
The Museum’s crown jewel of the Museum is arguably the original Jamais Content.
The Jamais Contente was the first car to break the 100 kmph speed barrier already in 1899. In fact, I met the Jamais Contente pretty much every year, which begs the question of how many replicas can be around.
The car in Compiègne bore the logo of Camille Jenatzy, thus, it was the actual car that had broken the speed record over 120 years ago.
The torpedo on wheels was equipped with two 25 kW electric motors, each driving the rear axle via a chain drive. The chassis seemed super aerodynamic, except for the poor driver hanging out from the waist.
This record-breaker faced off with another pre-war weirdo, a Citroën Kégresse from the “Black Cruise”, the first trans-African automobile expedition in the ‘20s.
The eight semi-tanks of the expedition were equipped with a 4-cylinder engine delivering 10 horsepower and featured flexible rubber tracks and a light-metal body. Even their luggage, was tailor-made at Louis Vuitton. The patent for all-terrain caterpillars was filed in 1917 by the engineer Adolphe Kégresse, hence the name.
That was the summary of our impressions from Compiègne. As usual, we publish a comprehensive gallery on the next page of this article. If you click on “2” below, you will find over 150 photos in the gallery. Before clicking on the next page, take a deep breath, as loading the pictures might take some time.
For an overview of the museums we visited, check out the interactive map:
