Philanthropist, Collector, and Car Enthusiast Peter Mullin Has Died

• Philanthropist, collector, and car guy Peter Mullin has passed away.

• The founder of the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California, had a lifelong love of French cars and Art Deco style furniture all housed in the museum.

• You can still see the collection Fridays and Saturdays if you’re in SoCal.

Peter Mullin, lifelong collector of beautiful French cars, founder of the Mullin Automotive Museum, generous philanthropist, and Pebble Beach winner, has died. He passed away September 20 in Big Sur, California.

Mullin rose from humble beginnings in Southern California to found a financial empire that allowed him to pursue his artistic enthusiasms, particularly with French cars. Mullin started out in college at the UC Santa Barbara as an art major but came to a realization early on that made him change his major to economics.

“A friend and I were working for an artist, a man of considerable talent, but there came a point where he couldn’t afford to pay us,” Mullin once told Autoweek. “I realized that something was wrong, here was this guy who had all this artistic talent, but who couldn’t make a living at it. So I went into business instead.”

He founded Mullin Consulting in Los Angeles when he was just 28 and cofounded M Financial Group 10 years later. His businesses were successful enough to allow him to pursue his first passion, French cars of the 1930s.

He amassed one of the finest collections of Bugattis, Delahayes, and Delages the world may ever know. You can see them at the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, Calif., where he houses many of them.

Mullin also won many concours around the world, including Pebble Beach in 2011 for his 1934 Voisin C-25 Aerodyne.

While Mullin owned many beautiful French cars, the 2011 entry didn’t fit the script for Pebble Beach winners. Most of those were black, with long hoods, flowing fenders and short cockpits way in the back. The Voisin was none of that, instead, its beauty was as much in its detail as in the large, rounded profile.