Stuttgart, Porsche, und das Museum

Tour of the Porsche Museum by Kaffee und Kuchen

Last month...I had a chance to visit the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. I had driven past this museum every time I'd taken the bus into Stuttgart (so well over 100 times) but until that day, I had never stepped inside. When the Metropolitan Club of Stuttgart organized a free tour of the museum, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity to finally go check it out. While I'm not a car buff by any stretch of the imagination, I was curious to see this world-famous auto museum minutes from my home.

Porsche sculpture in front of the Porsche Museum.

Opened in 2009, the museum is located right next to the Porsche Headquarters in Zuffenhausen. The design proposal from the Viennese architects Delugan Meissl was selected from over 170 entries in a European-wide competition. To reflect the company's bold and dynamic nature, the monolithic main structure of the museum is supported on only 3 V-shaped columns to make it appear as if it's floating above ground.

We visited the museum on May 22 ("Transaxle-Day") to see the special Transaxle Exhibit. Unlike Porsche's famous 911 model with the rear-mounted engine, the transaxles built by Porsche between 1976 and 1995 featured water-cooled front engines and rear-transaxles. We got a chance to see 23 unique transaxle models as well as several other cars and exhibits throughout the museum.

Each member of our tour group received a headset connected to our guide's microphone so we could easily hear him as we wandered through the museum. The tour ran for 30 minutes and covered some of the key displays in the museum, especially the transaxles in the special exhibit. The tour was in German and our guide used a lot of car-specific vocabulary so a lot of it went over my head. However, the museum itself is a work of art and the exhibits were clearly drool-worthy amongst the sports car aficionados in our group.

After the tour, we were free to roam the rest of the museum at our own pace. Some of my favourite cars on display included the Porsche police car (the one-millionth sports car produced by Porsche and gifted to the German Federal State of Baden-Württemberg), an old red fire truck, and a life-size model of Sally Carrera (the love interest of race car Lightning McQueen from the 2006 animated movie "Cars").

The Transaxle Exhibit runs from April 27 to October 16, 2016 if you're curious to check it out yourself.

How to get there: The Porsche Museum is located at Porscheplatz 1 in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen and is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 9am – 6pm. If using public transportation to get to the museum, you can take the S-Bahn on the S6 line to the Neuwirtshaus/Porscheplatz stop.