Mercedes Benz

Having already been in Stuttgart a week, there was one thing I had to do before I left Stuttgart. I was in the motor capital of the world and had not visited the shrine of one of the original car makers.

Porsche and Mercedes both have museums and factory tours in the Stuttgart area. Anne works for Daimler AG, the parent company for Mercedes, so we agreed to meet at the Mercedes Benz museum (right next to her office) on my last day in Stuttgart.

I thought the visit would have been worth it just for the architecture. Stepping into a polished stainless elevator pod, I was whisked back to the beginning of motoring history.

Benz's 3-wheeled motor carriage

Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz started building vehicles that we would recognize as cars well over 100 years ago. Their initial designs were simple, along the lines of the "horseless carriage." The big problem was in engines. Steam engines were huge, heavy contraptions that were hard enough to fit on a boat, let alone a carriage. Daimler and Benz fit neat little engines onto 3- and 4- wheeled carriages in the 1880's and essentially kickstarted the automobile revolution.

The world's first boxer engine. Subaru can thank Herr Daimler. 

I won't subject you to the entire history of the automobile as told by the Mercedes Benz museum, but here are some of the highlights.

Some of the original touring cars

Double-decker bus!

1954 300SL, one of the classics.

Grace Kelly's 190SL 

A hundred years of  Mercedes Benz racing

Silver Arrows, so named because the paint was sanded off the
aluminum body to make weight

Rally!

Concept

Future of the silver arrows?

The museum is a piece of art in its own right!

In short, I highly recommend the museum to anyone who visits Stuttgart. It not only follows the complete history of the car (how many other manufacturers can do that?), but places the automobile in the context of history. Mercedes truck engines powered the second world war, and their cars were some of the first to have seat belts (before they were required). At the end, I found myself on the history wall thanks to a camera and a screen. We're part of the story, too.

Seeing myself on the wall of the museum