Welcome to the French national car museum at Mulhouse in eastern France, a glorious concourse of hundreds of old cars, all immaculately restored, each one carefully presented complete with its own full history. The museum is a beautifully presented tribute to the history of car-making in Europe and over 250,000 visitors tread its polished floors each year, writes Hugh Oram
Welcome to the so-called National Transport Museum of Ireland, a collection of galvanised sheds out in windy Howth on Dublin's northside. Here you'll find a jumble of aged and dusty commercial vehicles packed together bumper-to-bumper on the concrete floor. Space is so tight you have to squeeze between the vehicles, like working your way through vehicles on a car ferry. During the summer, it's doing well to get around 500 visitors a month.
Ireland is alone among the main European countries in not having a proper national transport museum, yet official indifference and decades of neglect looks likely to continue.
The Howth museum keeps going thanks to about 10 dedicated volunteers who put in long, thankless hours restoring and maintaining the collection. Liam Kelly, chairman of the museum's committee, explains that since they started in 1949, they've always had a problem with a lack of funds. "We could do with new buildings for a start," he says.
Dr Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, describes the Howth "shed" as "the saddest story" among Irish museums, never getting the recognition it deserves for its tremendous collection.
The situation is in glaring contrast with the rest of Europe - even the State-run Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra, near Belfast, attracts about 185,000 visitors each year and has an exemplary transport collection covering all modes of transport.
Britain has about 130 museums dedicated to all modes of transport. The headline places include the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, Hampshire, which has about 250 vehicles of all kinds. There's even the British Lawnmower Museum in Southport, Lancashire - its motto is "It's all you need to mow".
Elsewhere in Europe, car and transport museums are commonplace, either generic or dedicated to particular marques, such as the VW museum in Wolfsburg, Germany.
In France, the Schlumpf collection, which forms the Musée Nationale de l'Automobile in Mulhouse, claims to be the largest automobile museum in the world. Recently given a complete makeover, it has about 400 cars on display, including many Bugattis, and 120 more in reserve. It attracts well over 200,000 visitors a year.
In the US, the Henry Ford museum at Dearborn, Michigan, is nothing if not comprehensive.
Several experts here believe that Ireland has the potential for a respectable collection. The biggest problem is that the best collections are private and aren't open to the public. Those that are on show are scattered around the four corners of the island, the result of an unplanned and haphazard decentralisation policy.
The Museum of Irish Transport in the centre of Killarney has a cloud hanging over it - the nearby hotel plans to expand, which means that the museum will have to move. "We're none the wiser as to when this will happen," says the museum's Eileen Daly. "We'll get this year out of it, but we are looking for another and bigger place."
There's a second car museum in Kerry, at Kilgarvan, run by John and Joan Mitchell, which gets between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors a year.
In Clonmel, Co Tipperary, Michael Lavin runs the Museum of Transport. "The tourist figures have gone to hell this season. I won't reveal our figures - they're too depressing. It's our coffee shop, run by my wife, that keeps the show on the road," he says.
Two years ago, Jim Bradley closed down his Vintage Car and Carriage Museum in Buncrana, Co Donegal, because he wasn't getting enough visitors. Earlier this year, ambitious plans for a national transport museum in Mullingar, admittedly centred mostly on railway and canal history, collapsed amid a welter of recriminations.
Official interest in the subject seems non-existent. Fáilte Ireland isn't aware of any proposals to develop a car museum. The Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism says that it hasn't carried out any research into the topic, adding that it's not currently aware of any perceived demand for such a facility.
A national car museum nearly got off the ground in Cabinteely, south Dublin, over a decade ago. Captain Theo Ryan and Tom O'Neill were part of a group of motoring history enthusiasts who were very involved in the plans.
They were dealing with the old Dublin Co Council. However, when the new Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Co Council came into being, it decided it didn't have the money to support a national car museum. Since then, says Ryan, the idea has been in limbo. Hopes that Airfield House in Dundrum could be an alternative venue haven't worked out either, he says.
Dr Wallace of the National Museum, who proclaims a love of motoring history and old cars, sees a definite need for a national car museum.
"A car museum is one of the few types of museum that appeal to men in the middle age group," he says. "You can also touch the exhibits, unlike most museums."
Sadly, the National Museum doesn't ever envisage having a car collection of its own.
Meanwhile, the history of car building in Dublin, Wexford and Dundalk fades into the sepia tones of history, not preserved in any museum. On this one, Ireland seems destined to remain the odd man out in Europe, shamefully neglecting a vital part of our industrial heritage.