Inside the World’s Greatest Classic Car Collections – Part 3: Albert Spiess

The second collector presented by Roarington is Albert Spiess, a Swiss native of Zurich – a man as discreet as he is cultured, and a meticulous scholar of every single example in his collection. The Key ranking quite rightly places him among the top ten collectors in the world. If California-based Bruce Meyer collects cars for the sheer pleasure of owning and driving them, Albert Spiess has assembled, just outside of Zurich, an extraordinary series of automobiles - often unique or extremely rare - with the aim of documenting the history of a brand, as in the case of Lamborghini, or of entire eras, as he has done with Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, and Aston Martin.

Spiess does not merely seek out the cars that are meant to enter his “realm”; he also devotes enormous effort to documenting their origins and significance. He does so to give history stories that were unknown - or never even told - not for personal glory. His passion, combined with a genuine and gracious altruism, is truly admirable. To understand what this means, consider that he has hunted down, purchased, and in some cases completely restored priceless one-off cars. Among them are the only Miura Spider in existence and the extraordinary Lamborghini Marzal, with its transverse six-cylinder engine - a spaceship of the 1960s - that had been abandoned for months on a dock in the port of Genoa and was at risk of being lost forever.