Matra Museum Becomes Victim Of French Floods

Located in Matra’s home production town of Romorantin, in the Loir-et-Cher region of central-France, late last week much of the Musee Espace Automobiles Matra – to give it its full title – was submerged under water, damaging a number of the special vehicle exhibits and supporting displays.

To limit the damage , the Museum's director, Dany Chamfrault, was assisted by employees and local volunteers, working throughout the day and night, to help raise the display cars up on blocks. A water pump was also installed to remove as much of the flood water as possible from the Museum site

Unfortunately, after the intial wave of flooding, the following morning the situation worsened, with some non-exhibiton cars, stored down in the Museum’s basement, swimming in 1.20 m of dirty water. Sadly, a number of prestine examples of the already rare Matra Bagheera, Rancho and Murena models were severly damaged, along with one-off Marra prototypes, including the unique 1998 Renault Espace 3 Spider concept cabriolet, designed and built by Franco Sbarro in Switzerland.

Mercifully most of the Museum’s fine collection of Matra Le Mans and Formula 1 winning racie cars and engines were not too badly damaged by the flood, along with a temporary themed exhibition of winning French competition machines, ranging from a Bugatti Type 35 to a Group B rallying Peugeot 205 T16. 

Following an extensive on-going clean-up, the Matra Museum is set to re-open its doors to the public on Thursday 16 June.  More information can be found at http://www.museematra.com/ .