The Zookeepers: Loh Collection

Build it, and they will come. Not a baseball field in Iowa, but the most incredible car museum you’ve only just heard of. The Loh Collection opened in a particularly quiet corner of the German countryside in July 2023, yet last year gathered awe-struck visitors by their thousands.

But before you tune out on the grounds museums are boring, let me put it to you like this: if you’ve ever wanted to set fire to the bad-tempered old mule in your garage, imagine trying to look after scores of the rarest and most temperamental beasts in the world, keeping them all in the finest of fettle – not just for posterity, but so their stories can chug, rattle and roar into the future.

Our story begins in the mid 1950s, when a 10-year-old Friedhelm Loh saw a family friend pull up in a brand new Mercedes 190SL – silver over blue, complete with whitewall tyres and chauffeur. ‘That image was seared into my mind,’ he said, almost 70 years later. ‘I just couldn’t stop thinking about that car.’