On lui a DONNÉ 150 VOITURES 😱

So we find ourselves in the aisles inside the Maurice Dufresne museum. How can you summarize this museum? If you're looking for Elysée lampposts, castle gates, a tank, a boat, looms, trucks, motorcycles, anything. Everything you're going to like, you're going to find it here. Maurice Dufresne was a visionary. He was a scrap dealer and like all scrap dealers, everything we recovered that was no longer useful, that was damaged, that was repairable, but we preferred to have more recent, more modern

things, and he recovered them, well took some from him, because today, it’s an incredible collection. I think it's the very definition of eclecticism, because here we will find steam locomotives, machine tools, looms, lawn mowers, cars, motorcycles, boats. It's a factory with paddle wheels and a whole bunch of stuff. It must be incredible. If you like mechanics or technology at all. There is bound to be something here that you will like. Why did it come to this? During the 30 Glorious Years, he

decided to recover what people no longer wanted. We are in creation. We're going to buy, we're going to do something new, we're going to do something modern, we want to always be up to date. And he’s a little bit like me actually. It is very difficult to throw away and sell. And there are lots of things that he collected and said to himself: “I don't know what it is, I don't know what it's for, but I'm going to put it aside, you never know. ” And then much later, as a result, he managed to set

up his museum, and it's really a great idea, because this museum is truly fabulous. Today, we talk to you a lot about van life, so it's very fashionable. We take a van, set it up and hit the road. In 1911, Nenesse, who was a tooth puller, lived with his family in this truck. So this truck is a Delahaye, so it’s still something exceptional. It was furnished, he lived in it, and what's more, it was his office. He was a tooth puller and he wandered from town to town, doing good or torturing people.

We don't really know because at the time, the methods were a bit complicated. But Nenesse, he kind of invented Van Life. Behind me you can see Nenesse's traveling cabinet. That's where he pulled teeth. And since we didn't really have any techniques for anesthetizing people, we strapped them with the big leather strap to the seats so that they couldn't escape. And then we had the little container, the little vial of alcohol afterwards to get the thing down. It was a different time, but things ha

ve changed a lot. So next to me you have a little Peugeot cart, and the little scar she has on her forehead is not because she fought with Voldemort. No way. That's because it's an electric cart. It's 1941, and like during the war, there is a shortage of just about everything. The Germans requisitioned the fuel. We have difficulty producing, we have difficulty finding steel, we have difficulty finding rubber. We are going to start making electric and small cars. Because the smaller the wheels, t

he less rubber there is. There's not a lot of scrap metal. And the fact that it's a convertible is a bit like the 2 CVs at the time. We put a hood because that way we don't need to put scrap metal on the roof and it's much simpler, much lighter and much cheaper to produce. And then what's more, like that, it's the materials that are more easily found. This car still works. There are about twenty left, and there must be three or four that work. And therefore, it is the first electric car produced

in France. When you bought this car, you were provided with this small electrical panel which you used to recharge it. It took around ten hours to recharge this car and it gave you 70 kilometers of autonomy. It's still huge for something from 1941, you'll agree. As you go along the aisles you will find everything, really everything. A small Solex lying around here, a Hanomag with tracks, and here a copy of a Morgan 4 plus, the very first models with the flat grille. That's a real rarity. Beside

s that, you will have a small scooter with a sewing machine, which made you someone who was capable of being itinerant and going to sew in people's homes. From there you have something that is a lot less fun. When Maurice Dufresne comes across a pile of wood, scrap metal, something completely dismantled, there is no plan, we don't know what it is. He said to himself: “I don’t know, it’s old, I keep it, you never know.” He even found a kind of plowshare a little rounded, a little twisted like tha

t, he recovered and many years later, they realized that in fact it was a real guillotine from the French Revolution. It has been authenticated and restored. There are many parts that are truly original on this guillotine. She even cut off a hundred heads. It's really a piece that is both ultra interesting and ultra creepy, but that makes it a real rarity, and it's another great take from Mr. Dufresne. Here you have a treadmill. So what is a treadmill? It was a machine used to thresh wheat. And

how did we operate this machine? By walking a horse on the carpet. And it was very restrictive for the horses. You had to change horses every 20 minutes. It was really something, all in wood it was really fun. Around me there is everything. I don't know where to look. It's really unbelievable. We're going to have horse-drawn carriages, we're going to have steam, we're going to have cars, modern, not modern. Behind me, there is a Citroën Trèfle, there is a Ford T, there is an American from the 60

s, and there is this plane too. So what is this plane? It is a glider which was used for training and which served during the war. If I tell you a somewhat famous phrase, do you want to know what particular purpose this one was used for? If I tell you: “There is no propeller, alas! That’s where the bone is.” Well, it's one of the gliders that was used to take interior shots by Louis de Funès, in La Grande Vadrouille. And yes, when he escapes at the end, where he says this famous phrase, it's par

tly in this glider. This old factory was a paper mill, and it still has its paddle wheel, which is monumental. It weighs 30 tonnes and we can still use it. It is still active thanks to the water. So Maurice Dufresne was also a demolition worker. And when he demolished the old buildings of the Poulain factory, he recovered this truck. You know this truck since we restored its little brother in the episode of Vintage Mecanic and it was an electric truck. So it was a Sovel! And that’s still excepti

onal for the year. So it's really a beautiful piece. You will have understood that in this museum you will find everything. There is bound to be something you will like. There are fire engines, there are GMC trucks. You have sleds that come from Russia. He brought this back from Russia on the roof of his car when he came back from vacation. Blériot's plane, obviously, is incredible. You have the large maneuverable fire ladder, a bit of a hand crank like that, from the period. I can only encourag

e you to come and visit this museum because it is a real eye-catcher. There are some extremely interesting things, you have to detail everything, you have to take the time to visit it. Come here, you won't be disappointed. Okay friends. I'm going to take another look because I haven't seen everything yet. It's incredible. I leave you. Hi !