Born a few years after the birth of the motor car, he started his professional life as an apprentice with a workshop devoted to engineering and machining.

 In 1929, at 25, he set up his first garage situated at St Pierre du Chemin in the District of Vendée and got soon a dealership for Automobiles Mathis.

 In 1936, he went to Paris to specialize in trading second hand cars and mainly the "car of the day", the Citroën Traction avant.

 In 1950, back to Nantes, he started again to drive the little Lion just for fun with some friends, but as he had some space he began to collect more and more of these old cars of which as a child he had often dreamed. At the time, he just stored them under some makeshift shelters around the family house.

 As these cars were often in very poor condition, he began to restore first the oldest and the worst machines during his free time. It was to be hard work sometimes, but what a bliss when an old engine came back to life, usually followed by some tests around the garden.

 In 1967 at Spring we opened to the public our fisrt museum with thirty cars. Then with collecting activities growing rapidly and having found an adequat piece of land, the whole family moved back to Vendée in order to open a proper museum here at Talmont, mear Les Sables d'Olonne in April 1976. We had eighty cars on display at the time. It was to meet a growing success.

 Now the Museum houses 45 different makes, ranging from the 1885 steam-engined De Dion Bouton to modern and advanced prototypes just arrived from Italy like the SOGNA and VERA one-off cars. Each year three or four "new" old cars join the Collection on display, coming from the reserve stock after having undergone a complete restoration in our workshop during the Winter months.

 But the Collection is not a static one. Many cars among the oldest are in perfect working order and my father and I used to drive them in national and international historic events and, to quote but a few: