SABRI ARTAM CAR MUSEUM

The year is 1935, the place New York. Blood is being spilt again in this city notorious for its gangsters. Shops and homes are being raided, guns are firing. The Italian quarter, the Chinese quarter, the East Side and the West Side are all in an uproar. The German mafia leader Kaiser and his Italian counterpart Mario cannot agree over their territorial shares. Innocent as well as guilty are losing their lives in clashes between the two gangs. Finally Kaiser decides to raid Mario's house that night. Towards midnight the Germans make their way into the Italian quarter and attack Mario's house. Mario makes his escape in the 1929 Ford belonging to his doctor Dick just in time. As day breaks over New York, the Italians find the car abandoned on the banks of the Hudson river. There are 40 bullet holes in the car.

Has Mario escaped alive or not? Who knows? Was it gangsters who fired at Mario's car? We don't know that either. The entire story is guesswork.

All we do know is that in those years doctors usually drove 1929 model Ford Doctor's Coupes, and that this particular car was involved in a gun battle or an assassination attempt on the driver. With its forty or so bullet holes intact, the car is now on show at the Sabri Artam Foundation Car Museum in Istanbul.

Classic models of Ford, Mercedes, Fiat, Cadillac, Citroen and other cars familiar from black and white films can now be seen at the museum. Even people who know nothing about cars cannot help but be excited at the sight of these magnificent specimens; red, black, blue or silver in colour, with hoods, black leather upholstery, thick chrome bumpers and 19 or 40 hp engines. Looking at them you realise how fast technology has changed over the past few decades. How quickly these cars went out of fashion and into oblivion. Cars that were the latest thing just fifty or sixty years ago are now history.

In the brochure we are told that the museum was established 'Because the Frenchman Cugnot went at 10 kilometres an hour by steam power in 1770, the Frenchman Lenoir experimented with a petrol engine in 1862, the first cars were built by the Austrian Marcus in 1875, Daimler in 1885, and Benz in 1886, car manufacture began with Peuegot in 1892, and Ford cars were born in America in 1900.' In fact, however, we know that it was leading Turkish businessman Sabri Artam's love of classical cars which was the real motivation behind the museum.
The museum is housed in a former technical high school at Çengelköy on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. The school was closed down because its distance from the city centre caused transportation difficulties for the pupils. Artam proposed turning the building into a car museum.
Artam's collection began with ten or so cars that he found in Turkey. Then he began to attend car auctions abroad, and the collection grew eventually to 150 veteran and classical cars.

These are exhibited over a 2000 square metre area on two floors of the five-floor building, and the next two floors are due to open soon. The top storey will be used as a café.
The museum is listed in the catalogue of world motor vehicle museums by the Federation Internationale de L'automobile. As well as the bullet peppered 1929 Ford Model A Doctor's Coupe already mentioned, there are other cars with interesting stories behind them. For instance, the 1969 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow was formerly the official car of Shah Muhammed Riza Pehlevi of Iran. He took the car to Switzerland when he fled the country, and it was purchased at auction there by officials of the Sabri Artam Foundation Car Museum, who brought it back to Turkey. The Shah's Rolls Royce is in mint condition.
A massive, glossy black 1964 Mercedes Benz with a hydraulic engine is one of just two in Turkey. The other belongs to the President's Office. One of the rarest cars is a 1933 Aero made in Czechoslovakia and brought to Turkey in 1998.

Others include a 1913 Clement-Bayard, a 1933 Fiat Balilla 508, a 1966 Ford Mustang, a 1949 Willys Jeep, and a 1950 Cadillac Coupe Deville. One of the newest and smallest is a 1975 Mini Cooper. Do not be deceived by the size. This car is faster than tody's Ferraris, because it runs on an eight cylinder Chevrolet engine. Çetin Soytürk told us the story of this little giant: 'This Mini is completely unique. We read in a French magazine about a Mini which had been fitted with an eight-cylinder engine by cutting the bodywork. We decided to do the same but without modifying the bodywork, and managed to fit a 200 hp Chevrolet engine. Nothing can hold this car back. Its speed is extraordinary.

Çetin Soytürk explained that the cars are restored in the museum workshop. Repairs are carried out using original parts, although these can be difficult to obtain.

Museum staff go searching for them at spare parts dealers and scrap yards all over Turkey. If they still prove elusive, they continue the search abroad. 'It is time consuming, but worth the trouble in the end,' explains Soytürk.

All the old cars at the Sabri Artam Car Museum are in working order. This tantalising piece of information set me musing about what fun it would be to drive through the streets of Istanbul in a 1929 model Ford. As passersby looked on in curiosity, my thoughts would return to the bullet holes. Who did the shooting, and who was in the car?

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