Tour of the Porsche Museumby 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.