The private motor museum Chelsea 1979 emerges in L'Hospitalet

Little do the residents of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat imagine that they have a very extensive collection dedicated to Formula 1, MotoGP, and the World Rally Championship very close by. A few minutes' walk from the Gran Via exhibition center, on Botànica street, the first and only McLaren dealership in all of Spain was inaugurated in 2020, just days before the pandemic lockdown was decreed. In addition to exhibiting the luxury sports cars of the British team, the building holds a secret that only a privileged few have been able to see. It is the private Chelsea 1979 museum, promoted by collector and businessman Eduardo Costabal, who began 45 years ago to collect all kinds of material related to motor sports, which includes not only cars and motorcycles, but also drivers' suits, helmets, gloves, and even driving licenses.

"I collect everything or almost everything that exists," says Costabal from his lair, almost an altar to motorsport. From Chile, Costabal arrived in Barcelona in 2013 to work with Porsche and, when the project ended, he decided to stay and open the Spanish market to McLaren vehicles, in addition to concentrating in a single space the collection he had begun to assemble in 1979.

When he started keeping everything he could, Costabal did so with the athletes' clothing, more within his reach at the time than the vehicles. His hobby has led him to have more than 200 suits that were once worn by F1 drivers such as Ayrton Senna, Niki Lauda, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen, and Lewis Hamilton. Of Schumacher alone, he has one for each year of his career, totaling 19, including even the one he debuted with in 1991 with the Jordan team. The clothing collection serves to show how the competition has evolved, going from the simple, even stylish, suits of the fifties to the more protected ones of today. As a nod to neighboring Barcelona, there is a Hamilton suit with the Sagrada Família stamped on the back from when he competed with McLaren.

Not everything is F1, there's also MotoGP, with more than one suit and bikes from Jorge Lorenzo, to whom Marc Márquez has been added, and the World Rally Championship. With the wardrobe, but also with the thirty models of cars and motorcycles on display, the history of the competitions is traced, with an eye already on expanding the space dedicated to the Dakar Rally, according to Events Manager, Isidora Costabal. "The museum never stops growing," remarks Eduardo Costabal's daughter, who frequently sees her father appear with new additions to his collection and they increasingly have less free space. If four years ago when the museum opened, they only occupied a four-story building, it didn't take long for them to expand to the block next door, where there is still some room to continue growing. Today, the Chelsea 1979 museum occupies about 3,000 square meters of available space, along with the dealership and a workshop for luxury cars.

In addition to all this, the Chelsea 1979 museum is complemented by another collection of Eduardo Costabal, in the underground floor, where he has classic cars, some of them for sale. He keeps vehicles that have sentimental value for him, such as one that a relative of his had and had sold, but ended up recovering 50 years later after locating the Japanese collector who had bought it. There are also some iconic ones like those seen in movies such as the Lotus Esprit from Pretty Woman (although he has it in green and Richard Gere's was silver), the Lamborghini Countach from The Wolf of Wall Street or an Aston Martin from James Bond. All of them bear the Chelsea 1979 license plate, as does the museum itself, in honor of the neighborhood where the Hackett clothing brand was born, for which Costabal worked, and the year in which his Diogenes syndrome began, as he himself defines it.

Closed to the general public, the Chelsea 1979 museum will now begin to open up a bit, with the expectation of organizing a couple of visits each week, but always by invitation. In addition, the space is dedicated to organizing private events for companies and individuals, renting the space and organizing different activities. One of these collaborations with brands is being done with another multinational with a presence in Barcelona, Bowers & Wilkins, a British company that produces audio equipment, especially loudspeakers, for domestic use, although professionals also use them, among them, the famous Abbey Road studios and the Icelandic artist Björk. With its headquarters for Spain located on Rosselló street in Barcelona, Bowers & Wilkins began working with McLaren in 2015, incorporating its equipment into the team's vehicles.