Volante, Automobile museum in Kirchzarten, Germany
Volante was a private automobile museum in a converted tennis hall of about 2,000 m² in Kirchzarten, south of Freiburg. It displayed up to 45 pre-war and post-war cars, with a focus on luxury bodies by the French coachbuilder Vanvooren. A large glass pane in the integrated restaurant Mangusta looked directly onto the exhibits.
The museum opened in October 2015 and operated for five years before closing in October 2020 due to pandemic restrictions. The venue had displayed vehicles from previous decades during its active period.
The name Volante comes from the Italian word for steering wheel. The museum's restaurant, Mangusta, was named after the De Tomaso Mangusta, and diners could look through a large pane directly at the cars. A 1931 LuWe motorcycle recalled that Freiburg also had a vehicle industry.
Visits were by guided group tour only, so the collection was not open for individual wandering. The hall held up to 800 people for events, exhibitions and presentations after its 2017 conversion. The Mangusta restaurant, named after the De Tomaso Mangusta, was built into the building and looked onto the cars through a large pane of glass.
Among the nine Vanvooren-bodied vehicles, seven were one-offs built to individual customer orders. The 1939 Bugatti Type 57 Cabriolet Vanvooren was requisitioned during the Second World War and used by the Wehrmacht as an officers' radio car; the 1937 Hispano-Suiza K 6 Berline had belonged to Raoul Dautry, French war minister in 1939.
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