A unique collection of nearly 1,100 Porsche model cars
in Hungary.
Sometime around 1973-74, in the outskirts of a dusty little town called Győr, in the heart of Central Europe, the story began. It wasn't with a PORSCHE, but with a pedal-powered Moskvitch, which was considered a top model at the time!
This Moskvitch - which I received from my parents - sparked my love for cars. We lived in my grandfather’s house with a garden at that time. But soon the day came when we moved to a new apartment in a newly built housing estate. My father didn’t want us to take the car to our new home because the kind neighbour and relative children had already turned my car into a wreck by then.
That's when my father said that the car would stay and that was that....
The small cars remained. My love for matchbox cars was constantly nurtured by my uncles and my godfather Jimmy, from whom I received a strangely shaped small car one day...
can you imagine what goes through a child's mind when they hold a small car in their hand that they've never seen in the streets full of Eastern cars or even on TV? I didn’t know what to do with it, but its red colour and shape intrigued me more and more... and of course, I slept with it and took it everywhere with me... to the street where we rolled cars down the sloping sidewalk to see whose went the furthest. Mine just kept rolling and rolling, and it really felt like I won the race of my life that beautiful afternoon... Then came our neighbour’s son Tibike, who loved talking to his father about everything in the garage and observing everything about cars. This was the garage workshop of a panel house with all its beauty, wonder, and smell... Tibi turned my matchbox over and exclaimed: Porsche! Laci, this is a Porsche 917!
At that time, we spent our time with bicycle races lasting until evening and watching cars until a wonderful day came with the opening of the playground of the Szabadhegy housing estate in 1981. We boys decided that with some small change brought from home, we would really spend money that day. With 30-40 Forints in our pockets, we really felt rich. We started looking at the offerings... fishing game, grab bag, shooting gallery... That was just for us, and we immediately lined up, six or seven of us. Everyone chose their favourite, which they might take home. My eye caught a wonderful red-black-gold sticker. I aimed and succeeded. I got mine... the boys aimed at rooster lollipops, plastic cars, plush figures, and things like that.
The oldest boy came over and asked Laci, did you really shoot a sticker? What are we going to do with that? I ran home in joy and placed the Porsche sticker in the glass showcase.
It stayed there for a long time. I stuck it on the door of my room, and during a painting job, they couldn’t remove it, so the sticker was lost, but the 917 remained.
When I already had a driver’s license, my father and I took a famous football player from Győr to Vienna airport.
On the way back, somewhere on the main road 1, a Porsche 944 overtook us. I told my father, “If I could ever have such a sports car" ...He said: "I think you’ll have even better than this. Just make sure that whatever you do in life, do it well and the results will come!" This was 1993.
My father passed away not long after.
A lot of time passed again when my friend Barnabas decided to buy a sports car and suddenly called me saying he got it! He came to show me what he bought. I almost fell out of the window when I saw the red 964 Turbo Coupe. He took me for a test drive. We covered 35 km on the highway in 9 minutes!
It was a fantastic experience! Maybe he doesn’t even know that this is how my love for Porsche returned to me... then the plan was born that one day I would also buy such a super sports car... but until then, the models remained. The collection started to form in 2004 when the model car boxes began to line the shelves in the garage. At that time, I visited the Modellbau exhibition in Vienna once a year, where I met Alexander Trimmel, the owner of the Vienna “exclusive auto model” dealership. His fantastic selection, favourable prices, and incredibly kind reception left beautiful memories in me. I bought several special car models from him.
Then, in June 2010, we organized a very successful introductory exhibition within 3 weeks. Including promotional materials, brochures, venue, showcases, and two cars. On June 11, 2010, the first exhibition of the Mátyás Porsche Collection 1:18 opened! It was open for 9 days and was a huge success. I was just the originator with a few ideas. A dream came true...
After a year, there was the second, then the third exhibition in Budapest. I got the opportunity to exhibit at a serious car-motorsport event... Then there was silence, and for about 4-4.5 years, the models were boxed in a garage... except for one car, the 356 Roadster, which meant the new beginning for me...
In 2015, I had the opportunity to reuse an old showcase system. We built this on one of the 12-14 m2 wall surfaces of our house garage with some family help :) The unpacking started again... at that time, there were about 120-140 models... Entering the garage, I just stared and it seemed almost unbelievable that I could see them together again!
In 2017, I made a list of vehicles that would be worth ordering to present a more comprehensive picture of the factory's car-building eras. Before Christmas, a package arrived thanks to a kind acquaintance couple. My thoughts were racing, but they didn’t settle even after seeing the current exhibition materials at the Porsche Museum in 2017, the spaces, the colors, and of course the fantastic vehicles. I tried to follow everything closely, and thoughts, ideas, and many questions kept coming even months later. Then suddenly the solutions arrived. By 2019, the concept of creating a private collection on par with the Porsche Museum started to become clear. In January 2021, I asked a friend in Germany to help order new cars. In the meantime, this connection was interrupted, so currently, my friends in Győr, Noémi and Ricsi, help me with everything.
Through them, more than 220 car models have arrived.
Collector's Items
Limited edition modells
Collection Expansion
