Joswin Town Car

This rare German Joswin exudes pure luxury.

Note the distinctive decoration of the body panels, the elegantly finished door handles and the large oval side windows ('opera windows'), through which you can see an interior lavishly adorned with, among other things, brocade, rosewood and ivory. Originally it was a Mercedes from 1913. In the early 1920s the car came into the hands of the German Josef Winsch, who in Berlin, under the name Joswin – a contraction of his first and last name – installed surplus aircraft engines in Mercedes cars. Winsch fitted a 7.2 liter Mercedes aircraft engine in this car and had a body built by the Berlin firm Szawe. Around 1924 the Joswin ended up in the United States, where it even appeared in several films, and in 1929 it was acquired by the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. For many years the ownership of the car was attributed to the German emperor Wilhelm II and to the king of Bulgaria. The Louwman Museum acquired the remarkable Joswin in 2015. The marque existed only from 1921 to 1924. Very few examples were built in any case, and this is quite possibly the only surviving Joswin in the world.