Last winter, we had some bad news: The Top Motorcycle Museum, one of the most unique moto museums in the world, had suffered a devastating fire. And, now we have some good news: The Top Motorcycle Museum is supposed to re-open next month!
The Top Motorcycle Museum sits in the mountains of Austria, at a ski resort in Hochgurgl. Although it’s not the size of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama (see our CMG visit to Barber here), the Top museum had a fine selection of motorcycles (230 machines on-site, many of them rare vintage bikes) in a unique location, like a scene from a James Bond film.
Costa first ran across the museum while he was doing a car launch, and wrote about his visit here. Sadly, in January of 2021, the museum suffered a devastating fire, with much of the wood structure destroyed, and many vintage motorcycles lost.
After the fire, the museum said it would rebuild. That sounded like a nice idea, but how would they get it all done? Mountain-top buildings present construction challenges at the best of times, and the coronavirus situation would surely make construction even more complicated? And, where would it find bikes to display, with many of the machines in the museum lost in the fire?
Months later, despite those challenges, the museum says it’s planning to re-open in mid-fall. According to social media posts from the museum, it’s expecting to be back in business on November 18, and it’s even posting photos of vintage bikes brought in to replace the machines that were burned.
Sadly, as the Top Mountain museum is in Austria, most of us still aren’t likely to get there. However—we can all use a bit of good news these days, and if you’re ever in the area, check in and see the improvements since Costa visited.
