The Top Mountain Motorcycle Crosspoint Museum, opened in 2016, was considered the largest in Europe. It burned at dawn today for reasons that are not yet known. The Austrian museum Top Mountain Motorcycle Crosspoint, in Hochgurgl, was opened in 2016 by the hand of hotel entrepreneurs Alban and Attila Scheiber, two twin brothers who are fanatical about the history of the motorcycle industry and culture. Unfortunately, for reasons still unknown, a fire broke out at around 4:30 am this morning in that museum of modern architecture, a building with many wood coverings of 3000 square meters, which ended up destroying the estate consisting of 230 historic motorcycles, produced by more than 100 different manufacturers, as well as some cars that were also on display inside. he authorities have not yet put forward the causes of the fire, nor is the officially known extent of the damage caused to the museum's valuable motorcycle collection. Everything seems to have been totally destroyed. No one was injured in the fire. This area was already an ex-libris in the mountainous area of the Austrian Tyrol, in the Obergurgl-Hochgurgl region, where there are several ski resorts and mountain hotels.
In normal times that would look like arson, in these times it looks like insurance scam arson...................
Terrible shame. I’m no pyromaniac or fire investigator but whatever genius passed the planning application for 230 leaking bikes to be displayed on softwood floors needs their head examining. Wood, accelerants, ‘random’ spark = whoosh and a BBQ. Apparently the vapours from the oils and fuels can be explosive if built up sufficiently. Inevitable outcome? Edit: some of the bikes in the photos were surrounded by leaked hydrocarbons.
Call me old fashioned but is someone saying that a European building first opened to the public 2016 didn’t have an operational fire suppression system? I find that hard to believe. Furthermore, any insurance company would stipulate that such a system should be installed before offering cover. I smell a rat.
The loss of any fine possibly rare classic bikes is a crime and a travesty. A large collection like that possibly didn’t all belong to the museum. They most probably had quite a few machines loaned to the museum.
Thanks for sharing this, David. Such as loss. Although they are machines, somehow motorcycles to me have motorcycle "souls" and the thought of those bikes burning up really saddens me.
Just awful, all those historic rare machines, it sends shivers down ones spine, remember the NMM when that caught fire and destroyed many rare machines, the Triumph factory that was producing the 600 four was also completely destroyed along with all the tooling, thankfully however "phoenix rose from the ashes" and Triumph re grouped and prospered. Those of us of a certain age can recall Summerland in the Isle Of Man, that tragedy led the IOM Government to legislate with some of the most stringent fire regulations in the UK.
We came upon this museum by accident when skiing on a day out to Obergurgl (sister resort to Hochgurgl). It was late in the day and had to get back to Solden,but we had a quick look around and were impressed by the quality and range of the exhibits. As bikers, as well as skiers, we said we would return at some time and spend much more time to properly see all the bikes. Obviously, that's not going to happen now - a real shame and a huge loss.
So sad. Moreover Austria is where I plan to ride in the after covid world. That museum would have been on the list of visits.
