Automobil Museum Frey – A Bavarian Bounty of Marvellous Mazdas

Museum tours can be a frustrating experience. Who among us hasn’t trudged along with a group moving like molasses past the most tedious displays, before being dragged at speed through the most fascinating exhibitions like your host has spotted drops of rain and remembered they left the washing out? How often have you been fed information so dry it could be embalmed and displayed in a glass case alongside the other exhibits?

The Mazda Classic Automobil Museum Frey is the museum experience as it should be. Fascinating history spread out before you, each exhibit given its space, and if you’re fortunate enough, a tour from the Frey family themselves; father Walter and sons Markus and Joachim, whose deep passion for the brand extends far beyond the family’s Mazda car dealership in the town of Augsburg.

The museum is a special place, the first for Mazda outside of Japan. Set up in 2017, many of the exhibits have been personally sourced, bought and restored by one of the sons or their father. As we walk around, the trio gently chastise each other over particular cars – an unwise purchase that required a lot more work than expected, or cost a little too much money, or perhaps causes issues when the vehicles, all in operating condition, are occasionally driven.

There are around 120 vehicles in total, which doesn’t sound like an enormous number for a company celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2020, but then Mazda is not an enormous company by global standards. Aside from technical partnerships here and there Mazda remains largely independent these days, enjoying something of a renaissance of flair and technical intrigue after shedding the last shackles of previous owner Ford in 2015.

That independence, and the single-minded focus it allows, exudes from every inch of metalwork in the collection. Sitting nearly central in the museum building, once a tram depot for the city dating back to the 19th century, is the diminutive yet startling shape of the AZ-1. Co-developed with Suzuki in the early 1990s, the AZ-1 was the company’s take on a sports car to slot into the kei-jidosha light automobile tax class in Japan – all the benefits of a tiny, low-consumption car, but wrapped in exotic, gull-winged bodywork with a mid-mounted and turbocharged inline three. Honda had its Beat and Suzuki its own Cappuccino, but the AZ-1, sold under Autozam, one of Mazda’s numerous sub-brands of the era, was by far the most interesting.

To one side of it are cars most will be familiar with from Mazda, though not necessarily all in familiar forms. There’s a section for the MX-5 for example, but one of the cars on display is the rare Roadster Coupe, based on the second, “NB” generation. Just a few hundred were produced for the Japanese market alone. They’re rare, and valuable, and to see one in the metal makes you wish Mazda had seen fit to produce a much larger run.

Nearby are the RX-7s – during our visit, a pristine silver FD, a white FC convertible, and a pair of first-generation FBs. The red car of the pair has interesting history indeed, once owned by Felix Wankel himself, creator of the rotary engine used so widely through Mazda’s history. Wankel couldn’t drive, but apparently enjoyed being driven in the car. Nearby is Mazda’s last production rotary car, the RX-8, a car whose modern value on the used market is more indicative of the careful maintenance it requires than it is the satisfying driving experience it delivers.

Adjacent are the more unusual rotary models from the brand’s history. Few are stranger than the Roadpacer AP. In the mid-70s Mazda had no real competitor for cars like Toyota’s regal Century, so it turned to Holden, bringing its HJ saloons into Japan, sans-engine, and fitted them with 13B Wankel units. If you’re thinking a torque-light rotary engine (102lb ft, for the record) is not an ideal bedfellow with a 1.5-ton saloon, you’d be correct, and the Roadpacer sold poorly. AP, for the record, stood for “anti-pollution”, which also seems ironic given most rotaries’ appetite for carbon-based products…

Most curious of all though has to be the Parkway Rotary 26. There’s no other way of putting this… it’s a 26-passenger luxury bus. More sensible petrol and diesel piston engines were also available in the Parkway, but the model probably wouldn’t be remembered were it not for Mazda’s maddest engine fitment. It’s joined by several other exceedingly rare Wankel-engined models, from the beautiful Luce of the late 1960s, through several generations of Cosmo (the last of which used a three-rotor engine) to a REPU – the “rotary-engined pick-up”. The Freys’ example of the latter is, rather wonderfully, in tow-truck form, and wears their garage branding down its lemon yellow flanks.

There’s plenty for enthusiasts of non-rotary Mazdas too. In addition to the MX-5s and AZ-1, there’s plenty of love given to the 323, most notably in Group A rally form, the MX-3 with its 1.8-litre V6, while an appropriately small section is dedicated to gleefully small cars. Mazda has of course long been involved in Japan’s kei class, and immaculate examples of cars like the Chantez, Porter Cab, Carol, and Mazda’s first mass-produced car, the R360 are all on display. The exhibits do rotate (you can have that rotary pun for free), but Mazda’s impressively diverse history means you’ll struggle to be disappointed by whatever is on display at a given time.

It’s an essential visit for fans of the brand, and highly recommended for car enthusiasts who find themselves in the area. Augsburg is around 30 miles from Munich and nestled in the same stunning Bavarian countryside. It’s also within half a day’s drive from incredible mountain passes such as the Klausen, Grossglockner and Silvretta, so perhaps it’s one to add to the list when returning from a European road trip. Reckon they’d let us borrow that Roadster Coupe?…