There’s a David Coulthard Museum?
If you want to be a professional Formula One driver you need to manage your brand. That means, at the very least, you need a website. Here you (or your manager, or you team of publicists) can post pictures and news about your racing career. You can also use it flog merchandise.
You probably also want to get yourself a fan club, a Facebook page, twitter account and a karting or GP2 team.
But all that is pretty standard stuff. It doesn’t really set you apart from every other racing car driver on the planet. If you really want to prove how good you are you need your very own museum. Like David Coulthard.
Is there an Alonso Museum? No. A Hamilton Museum? No. There isn’t even a Senna Museum. (Ok so there is a Juan Manuel Fangio Museum and a Gilles Villenueve Musem but the ratio of racing drivers to museums is still pretty low.) But DC has one. Or at least he did. According to the DCM website:
For the last few years DC fan Wendy McKenzie has been running the David Coulthard Museum. After it had been closed down she took it upon herself to get the museum up and running again, so like herself, DC fans the world over would be able to see for themselves the amazing collection of memorabilia he has amassed and celebrate the motorsport career of one of Scotland’s most succesful drivers
That time has unfortunately come to an end and you somehow get the feeling that the small village of Twynholm and Scotland as a whole are losing a National treasure that has drawn in loyal David Coulthard fans from all over the world during the past 12 years. Wendy had this to say…
It is with a very heavy heart that I have to announce the closure of the David Coulthard Museum.
I have found the circumstances just a little too much to take, and as you are all probably aware I have struggled all the way through this but as we all know it is the little thing that finally breaks the camels back and after a lot of heart-searching I have come to the decision to move on with my life and get it into some kind of normal routine again.
Yikes! Sounds like it was a labour of love keeping that national treasure going. It’s a pity it has closed down as it looks like it had some interesting stuff in it including the Williams FW17B that DC won his first race in. But I guess the number of loyal David Coulthard fans visiting Twynholm from all over the world has dropped now that DC has retired.
As Wendy says:
Short of a miracle, it will not be opening to the general public again.