a young enthusiast of vintage road signs goes miles to restore them

Nicolas Weber, 25, travels the roads of Alsace in search of concrete Michelin signs to give them a boost. An initiative which allows locals to rediscover small pieces of heritage, dating from 50 years ago to almost a century, which were before their eyes.

Perhaps you have never noticed them while traveling through our beautiful region. But some towns are indicated by very old signs, which are sometimes almost a century old! A real piece of road heritage, little by little replaced by modern sheet metal signs, and forgotten. In Alsace, a young enthusiast has made it his mission to find these lost vestiges of the past and restore them on a voluntary basis.

Nicolas Weber says it himself: he is “fell in the pot” when he was little. Since a young age, this Alsatian has been passionate about cars, roads, and their history. He still remembers with nostalgia the walks he took with his grandmother in Gresswiller, where one of these large vintage panels stood. “Some of these panels are more than 70 years old, they have seen the exhaust steam of the 2CVs!” exclaims the 25-year-old young man with admiration.

Manufactured from the 1930s until 1971 by Michelin, in reinforced concrete like the bunkers, these signs, which indicated directions or announced the names of towns, are increasingly rare on our roads. Particularly in Alsace, where major fighting took place during the Second World War. “Even today, unfortunately, there are panels which disappear, because the municipalities which undertake road work are not aware of them. The same goes for the companies which carry out façade work in the case of wall panels” , explains Nicolas Weber, who regrets their replacement by panels made of sheet metal. “It is planned for ten years, it’s planned obsolescence! At the time, we manufactured to last. But it was deemed too dangerous…”

For 7 years now, Nicolas Weber has been contacting the communities in Alsace where one of these Michelin signs has been spotted, and offering them his voluntary restoration services. “Most of them are still in very good condition, since the plaque in the center, made of enameled lava, remains solid. I simply repaint the raw concrete outline white, and that gives them a shine again.” explains the man who started by giving a facelift to the Itterswiller entrance sign. But the adventure continued. “As I like walking around Alsace, it was fun to spot them and reference them on a map. But it was when I realized that some were missing that it clicked, and I wanted to do something, on my own small scale.”

Today, his Facebook page “Restoration of Michelin Panels”, which has nearly 800 subscribers, retraces his wanderings in Alsace, and allows him to be contacted by other curious people who have spotted an abandoned panel. The young man also travels to neighboring Lorraine. He hopes that making his work known canraise awareness among municipalities “this little-known heritage to be safeguarded,in the same way as castles or churches”, before it is taken down.

The next panels to be restored by him will be those of Schiltigheim and Scherwiller. For the curious, around 70 Michelin panels, found abandoned in a wood near Colmar, were transported to the museum of the transport conservatory of Wissembourg, north of Bas-Rhin, and are now visible to the public.