"Pontarlier, France" Pontarlier by PartyRambo

Well, France was just a day trip from Switzerland this time around. I'd hoped to get to Paris some time, but today I was driving to a specific location in Switzerland, and was re-directed across the border to Pontarlier, France.

I'd come to see the workshop of Franco Sbarro, a custom-car builder to the elite, wealthy car buffs of the world. He only builds a few dozen a year, so they're hard to find, but at $100,000 - $300,000+ per vehicle, he doesn't need to build many to survive.

He's well-known in the higher echelon custom car market, so I won't bore the reader with details, but he does top-notch work, VERY exclusively, and VERY, VERY expensively.
(If you can't put your house up as collateral towards the purchase of one of his cars, don't bother flying to Switzerland for your first meeting!)
His museum of prototypes, one-offs & design show cars is, for some reason, just across the border, in Pontarlier, so I headed off through the valleys, forest & plains, to find the medium-sized French town.
A quick slice of pizza & a large beer in town, and I was ready to view the 100+ cars in the warehouse museum on the outskirts of town.

From minor modifications of everyday vehicles, to a few design studies, to one-off copies of the custom-built cars he shows off at the Geneva Auto Show, everything he's done is here.

The north hall

The museum is laid out very plainly, but I came to see the cars, not the architecture.

I kept 384 pictures from those I took here (yes, a digital camera DOES come in real handy sometimes!), but I'll keep these displayed on VT to a minimum. For those of you that appreciate this stuff, check back on these pages in (summer 2003?) when I should have a really complete personal web page to refer you to, with ALL the pics! :>)