Hamburg – Germany has a proud history of automobile manufacture, as every car enthusiast knows. Now increasingly more German manufacturers are preserving the past in their own corporate museums.
Audi is just putting the finishing touches to a new museum at its headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, which will open at the end of this year. It will display 60 cars and 20 motorcycles portraying the company’s varied history, a spokesman said. Highlights include a restored Horch 885 roadster, dating from 1939, and the last surviving Audi G from 1923.
The museum follows hot on the heels of the Volkswagen “ZeitHaus” at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, near Hanover. This recently opened exhibition displays numerous automobile legends from all over the world, not just limited to its own and the VW Group’s other marques.
The historic highlight is a faithful reproduction of the first VW Beetle prototype. The ZeitHaus is located next to the AutoMuseum Volkswagen, which opened in 1985, and exhibits more than 200 vehicles from the original VW Beetle to the New Beetle.
Opel in Ruesselsheim, Frankfurt, also has a historic collection at its Opel Live pleasure park on the company’s headquarters. Opel spokesman Paul Entwistle said there is a core exhibition of 50 vehicles from their pool of vintage and classic cars as well as a changing programme of exhibitions.
The oldest of the German car manufacturers’ museums is the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart-Untertuerkheim, which attracts 400,000 visitors a year. The exhibition opened in 1923 and now exhibits around 80 vehicles on three levels over 6,000 square metres – including numerous cars from different racing series along with one papal and two imperial limousines, as well as the world’s first two cars.
Half an hour away by local train to Zuffenhausen is the Porsche Museum, which opened in 1976 and now welcomes 40,000 visitors a year. The newly-renovated hall has 25 sports cars from series models to successful racing and prototypes, the oldest dating from 1912.
Further south is the Silberschale at BMW’s headquarters in Munich, home to the Zeithorizont exhibition, attracting 200,000 visitors a year. It has nearly 100 aeroplanes, engines, cars and motorbikes as well as films and slide shows, portraying the beginning of motorisation to the vehicles of the future. The oldest exhibit is the Wartburg Motorwagen, dating from 1899.
But German car manufacturers are not the only ones carefully tending their heritage. Just one the other side of the Franco-German border in Alsace, Peugeot has opened a museum at its headquarters in Sochaux. It shows 200 vehicles from series production, race driving and the development department. It also exhibits historic products from the company’s other ranges such as bicycles, tools, coffee and pepper grinders and sewing machines.
In Italy, Alfa Romeo’s corporate museum in Arese, north of Milan, underwent an extensive renovation in honour of the marque’s 90th anniversary. It exhibits examples of all series models of the last nine decades as well as many racing cars, prototypes and design studies.
In the Czech Republic, the Skoda corporate museum in Mlada Boleslav offers a history of automobile making in Eastern Europe.
