Cars! Cars! Cars! A visit to the Porsche Museum
When I was looking for a destination around Europe to spend my May 1, International Labor Day, long weekend, I decided to combine Strasbourg, with its charming village feeling, and Stuttgart, known for being the industrial home of Porsche and Mercedes-Benz.
Just after waking up, I hopped on the S-Bahn from Hauptbanhof to Neuwirtshaus/Porscheplatz station. The museum is right there, adjacent to the train tracks.
I was impressed with the service as soon as I walked up to the ticket counter. The attendant proactively asked me if I had taken public transit to the museum. Indeed I had, and upon showing my transit day pass, I learned that I got half-price admission, paying €4 instead of €8! This discount wasn't published anywhere on the website, so it was a very pleasant surprise!
One negative with visiting on the May 1 holiday was that the Porsche workshop, kind of like a repair shop for special cars, and the Porsche factory were closed. I read that the Porsche factory tour is quite special, because you can see the hand-made process of Porsches in contrast to more fully automated factories. I guess I'll have to come back to see that.
The museum itself is quite a manageable size, basically a loop of cars tracing Porsche's history.
This was my favorite car: the very first Porsche! It was based on the VW Beetle which Mr. Ferdinand Porsche developed first.
The view from the back...
I can now see how the VW Beetle and all Porsches share a family resemblance!
This car was quite eye-opening. Porsche developed this concept for the China market: t's a family car, with one car seat because of the one-child policy... and called the C88, further pandering (?) to Chinese tastes.
While I know that Porsche helped with engineering a lot of ho-hum cars, this one's a bit different, because it was engineered from start to finish by Porsche, and served as the company's attempt to expand in China.
This race car had a funny backstory. It was criticized for having a short, wide body similar to a pig. So Porsche painted it pink, and labelled it with the parts of the pig like in a butcher's diagram.
Overall, the Porsche Museum is good for maybe a 3-4 hour visit. You get an audio guide included with the ticket price, and even at €8 full price admission, I thought it was a good value.
