The automobile collection of the National Technical Museum has a national or territorial character. With two or three exceptions, it contains only automobiles that were manufactured in the territory of today's Czech Republic, or whose operational history is closely connected with the country.
The more than one century-old tradition of domestic automobile production is understandably a priority of collection-building at the National Technical Museum. While the production of the most important domestic automobile manufacturers is documented proportionally in the collection, throughout its entire historical cross-section, smaller manufacturers are represented only by selected pieces. In addition to a complete overview of the production of the three historically most important domestic automobile manufacturers NW - Tatra; Laurin & Klement - Škoda; and Praga there are also automobiles from Aero, Enka, Jawa, MTX, RAF, Velox, Walter, Wikov, Z and, more recently, from the "Kolín triplets" Toyota - Citroen - Peugeot.
Of course, the level of motoring life in the Czech Republic is also evidenced by automobiles made by foreign manufacturers that were imported to the country in the past and operated here. Today, these make up roughly a quarter of the collection and are generally extremely valuable vehicles. Among them is, for example, the world's oldest preserved automobile from Ettore Bugatti's Molsheim factory; a very valuable collection of eight Benz, Mercedes and Mercedes-Benz automobiles; and the oldest vehicle of the Audi make in existence.
An important separate part of the collection is made up of vehicles that are closely connected with the most significant events in the country's general history through their operational history. The collection contains automobiles used by almost all domestic presidents, a number of prime ministers, as well as important representatives of foreign powers from times when the country was not free. These vehicles are authentic witnesses of glorious and tragic moments in the turbulent history of the Czech lands.
The first automobile was acquired by the museum in 1919 through the Ministry of Public Works and represents an almost symbolic achievement. The first automobile in the museum's collection was the NW Präsident from 1898, which has a very special place in the Czech history of domestic automobile production. It was present at its very birth, as it was the very first automobile produced here.
Another seven automobiles gradually expanded the museum's collections between 1927 and 1935. However, in the first decades of its existence, the museum, which was based at the time in the Schwarzenberg Palace in Hradčany, could only expand its automobile collection with extreme sobriety due to spatial constraints.
At the beginning of 1948, the first part of the premises in the new museum building in Letná was made available for the National Technical Museum. It also included a large hall with adjacent depositories, which were intended for displaying and storing objects from transportation collections. In 1950, a transport exhibition was opened in this hall, which immediately became the main attraction of the museum.
The post-war period was a period of great acquisition possibilities, which the then curator of transport collections František Štýdl managed to make excellent use of. In 1962, the collection already had 42 cars. Among them were such gems as the first automobile operated in the Czech lands, the Benz Viktoria from 1893, the first domestic racing car, the NW 12HP "Rennzweier" from 1900, the Bugatti 13 from 1910, the Bugatti 51 and the Mercedes Benz W154 racing cars, a twelve-cylinder Tatra 80 used by President Masaryk and the Tatra 87 used by the renowned travellers Hanzelka and Zikmund.
The days when the National Technical Museum was basically the only institution in the whole country interested in valuable historic automobiles ended at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. Automobiles quickly became objects of collectors' interest, which made the acquisition possibilities of the museum significantly more difficult. Nevertheless, the museum succeeded and continues to expand and enrich its automobile collection. Over the last sixty years, approximately another hundred cars have been added to the collection, among them, for example, the Mercedes Benz 770 show car, the unique Jawa 750 "1000 Czechoslovak miles" sports coupe or the chassis of the Brno Zbrojovka Z-14 racing car. The collection of automobiles of domestic political representatives was expanded with the Renault 21 TSE and Mercedes Benz S 600 used by President Havel's, four representative cars used in the 1970s and 1980s by the highest communist representatives of the country, Prime Minister Miloš Zeman's Tatra 700, and two Škoda Superb cars used by Presidents Klaus and Zeman respectively. Among the latest additions, it is necessary to mention the Tatra 815 "Puma" car with which Karel Loprais won the Dakar Rally three times.
About a third of its collection cars are exhibited by the National Technical Museum in its transportation exhibition, the rest are stored in depositories and used for occasional exhibitions and presentations.