Sleeping vintage beauties in Kassel

Decay stops at nothing - it hits cars as well. Most of the time, those cars are put in a scrap press and that's the end of it. But sometimes, they are put in a museum instead. Vintage cars with rotten bodies and interiors that have been corroding for decades are on display in Kassel's exhibition "Sleeping beauties of former times."

40 cars are on display - all part of the "Schlumpf Collection" of the two brothers Hans and Fritz Schlumpf. Both were obsessed with cars. Purchasing cars - like this Delahaye Type 87 - ultimately led to the financial ruin of the two cloth manufacturers from Mulhouse, France, in 1976.

Workers occupied the factory after it went bust, and when they came across the cars, they were so angry that they wanted to burn them - like this 1927 Minerva. The labor union managed to stop this at the last minute. The two brothers were allowed to leave for Switzerland, and the French authorities took over their collection. Today, the site is home to the French National Automobile Museum.

The museum's curators want people to discuss the value of these "sleeping beauties," which is why they are showing a rotten Alfa Romeo next to a restored version. German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer said that the cars would raise the question of whether they are "cultural assets, art, or just pieces of scrap."

These 40 cars from Mulhouse have never been on display before - they were hidden away in sections of the museum that weren’t open to the public, until Heinz W. Jordan and Dietrich Krahn, the two curators, discovered them. "Some of these vehicles had not been touched for 80 years," Jordan said.

Mercedes only assembled 14 of the Silver Arrows racing car, and the Schlumpf brothers bought one of them in 1966. This particular model had some success on the race track: in 1939, it placed eighth in a race on the legendary Nürburgring, while in Reims it came in first.

Despite the fact that these vehicles haven't been touched in years and weren't restored, many of the details are still visible and well-preserved, like this emblem of the Ballot Type 2 LST model from 1925.

The occasion for the exhibit is Kassel's 1,100th anniversary - its sister town Mulhouse has allowed the town to add this exhibition to its festivities. The sleeping vehicles are on display in Kassel until July 31.