Rusting land yachts at the Wijnlands Motor Museum

Some evocative shots showing the passing of time on several different levels, from an amazing auto graveyard outside Cape Town

I had read about the Wijnlands Motor Museum on the web, and seen some shots of the cars, so on a recce last December to scope out Babylonstoren (needs a separate post – amazing), I called by.  I wanted to get to the museum at the end of the day, for the evening light, and was irritated to find, at 5 pm, that it closed at 4.  Fortunately, the affable owner saw me, let me in, and let me wander around as long as I wanted – which was in fact until well after dusk.  This is a strange place indeed.  There are over 400 cars here – almost all in astonishingly poor condition.  It’s the antidote to the gleaming surgeries of most modern car museums, but a bit of a shock in terms of the condition of the vehicles.

There is a huge range of cars here – mostly from the 40s, 50s, and 60s.  They are uniformly beaten up, rusting, and semi-destroyed. A very few are in sort of OK shape – and strangely, these are not really the most interesting ones.  Why on earth, I asked the owner, do you have all these wrecks here?  He told me that they are all for film production – if someone needs a car of a particular vintage, they will quickly duffy it up, and get it running.  When you see the state of most of them, this seems a bit unlikely  – I think it’s more a grand and very eccentric obsession, that may be marginally supported by renting a few movie cars.  Either way, it’s a wonderful place to visit if you like this kind of thing.  The only equivalent I can think of is the vast aeroplane graveyard by the airport at Tucson – somewhere else I would dearly love to visit again and photograph.

I took my Nikon D600 and the 85mm 1.8 lens on this trip, and was very glad I had.  The light turned out to be perfect, and the shallow depth of field helped me to hide the background of jumbled rusting hulks.  Anyway, here are the photographs.  As usual, instructions on viewing them are at the end of the post.

Wijnlands Motor Museum

The Red GM 1

The Red GM 1

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Fin 1

Fin 1

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Ultra convetible

Ultra convetible

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Lets have look inside this here hood

Lets have look inside this here hood

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Lets go for a spin

Lets go for a spin

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Mercury

Mercury

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

NIce Rad

NIce Rad

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Low slung S-type

Low slung S-type

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Nice Rad 2

Nice Rad 2

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Roof and screenline

Roof and screenline

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Screenline

Screenline

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Fenderline

Fenderline

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Unusually nice headlamp, given the remainedr of the car.

Unusually nice headlamp, given the remainedr of the car.

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

The ghost of Chrysler

The ghost of Chrysler

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Nice Rad 3

Nice Rad 3

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Lets go for a spin 2

Lets go for a spin 2

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

The Red GM 2

The Red GM 2

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

The line to Eldorado

The line to Eldorado

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Windows

Windows

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Chrome trim adds sophistication to today's vehicles

Chrome trim adds sophistication to today's vehicles

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

The Fin 2

The Fin 2

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

The Red GM 3

The Red GM 3

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

Took that corner a shade too fast there.

Took that corner a shade too fast there.

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

The Red GM 4

The Red GM 4

The incredible Wijnland Auto Museum, Joostenberg Vlakte, in the Western cape

To View: If you have Flash the photos are best seen in full screen (press FS in the bottom right hand corner), and in slide show ( press SL).   If you don’t have Flash, i.e if you are using an Apple iPad/Pod/Phone, or a Nexus 7/10 tablet, or any Android tablet running 4.1 +, you can now see them as well.  Just click any of the thumbnails and a full screen slide-show should start. Information on each photo can be seen by clicking on the ‘i’ symbol in the upper right corner of the screen show.