Auto Erotica

The first thing you notice about Stuttgart is how low-rise the city is. Bombed pretty much to oblivion during World War II, Stuttgart, unlike Munich, has not undertaken a massive rebuilding exercise. Most of the city’s historic monuments, such as the central train station (Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof), still remain, but much of the rest of the city is new. The city is a living example of the success of the Marshall Plan, if you remember your history. It is also home to two of Germany’s most famous companies—Mercedes-Benz and Porsche—and is thus steeped in automotive history. And both these companies have recently built two grand museums for their cars.

We first went to the Mercedes-Benz Museum, which is an architectural masterpiece in itself. It comprises three overlapping circles, with the centre removed to form a vast seven-storey atrium—a staggering 16,500 sqm. of exhibition space. And Mercedes-Benz has filled it up with over 1,000 vehicles from its history, all the way back to replicas of the first vehicles ever made by Karl Benz and Gottleib Daimler. The first thing that you see when you exit the lift, though, is a horse!

The museum is full of interesting vehicles, like the first truck and the first bus ever made, or the very first Mercedes, which was a car designed by Wilhelm Maybach for Emil Jellinek, an European aristocrat.

Jellinek named the car after his daughter Mercedes. In fact, what was even more peculiar to discover is that Benz and Diamler never met in their lifetime, even though from 1926 onwards their companies operated as a single entity.

The Mercedes Museum not only has some of their best pre-WW II era race-cars but also copies of aeroengines made by the company, including the famous DB601, which went into the Messerschmitt Bf109, Germany’s most-produced fighter of the war. The museum has an interesting amount of information about the war as well as the company’s acknowledgement of the use of forced labour in that era.

What is really nice is the amount of video and audio material that the museum has. The e8 entrance fee includes an audio tour. Given the mass of information, Mercedes has used some nifty technology from HP to enable the museum tour. Go close to an exhibit and press a button to hear all about it. Walk from one hall to another in the spiral museum and the audio gives a brief introduction of that particular display.

As you move down the halls you see some of the company’s most famous cars, including the 300 SL “Gullwing” and a special exhibition of the E-class sedan, of which Mercedes has just launched their latest version. Then you step into a massive circular hall which marks 75 years of Mercedes in motorsport, all the way from Jellinek’s early racers to Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 F1 World Championship car.

Some distance away, in the Zeffenhausen district of Stuttgart next to the old Porsche factory, is the brand-new Porsche Museum which opened earlier this year. This, too, is an architectural marvel as Porsche did not want to be outdone by Mercedes-Benz. Though not in the same scale as the Merc museum, the building housing the museum is spectacular and cost an estimated e100 million to build.

The museum features some of Ferdinand Porche’s early work—including a Mercedes car as well as the original Volkswagen Beetle—but mainly features the work that he did with the company he named after himself. The first ever Porsche, a 356, is featured and the museum showcases how the company evolved that car into some of the best racing cars of all time as well as the iconic 911. You even get to see the concept cars that led to the 911 as well as the first one of its kind.

Porsche didn’t just design goodlooking cars, the company’s engineers also made some revolutionary changes in automotive engineering. You can see that evolving not only on the audio tour (which costs e2 extra) but also on the extremely well-designed information screens, which sit on a faux moving table that can be manipulated.

The sad part is that we barely had any time in either museum. If you are an auto buff, you could spend the whole day in both museums and not get bored. Both museums have shops with enough souvenirs for people to buy, even though some of them are rather pricey. A model of Lewis Hamilton’s MP-24 race-car costs e50. Ouch! But there are always some cutprice models and other paraphernalia in the stores.