A Chinese millionaire with an expensive hobby has sold everthing else to build his own motor museum.
After spending almost his entire fortune on classic cars, businessman Luo Wenyou, 57, decided it was probably best to open a museum. Luo’s obsession started when he bought his first vintage car for 5,000 yuan in the early 1980s. Since then he has spent around 70 million yuan ($11.1 million) to promote classic car culture and support the Beijing Classic Car Museum.
As well as classic foreign brands like Rolls Royce, Morgan and Ford, the museum is home to a number of Chinese classic cars. One of Luo’s favourites is a 10-metre-long Hongqi (or red flag) stretch limousine, used by the likes of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.
The museum attracts 70,000 visitors a year, who each pay around 50 yuan per person for the experience. The classic motors have also been used in a number of films, such as “The Founding of a Republic” and “Great Revival”.
The museum still has some way to go before it can rival the collection that has grown to become the National Motor Museum, owned by Lord Beaulieu (pronounced Bew-ley) in the South of England, or LeMay America's Car Museum with 1,500 vehicles in Washington in the US.