You might be surprised to see only one Museum from Germany on this top list. Indeed, there are numerous excellent factory museums in Germany, including BMW World, Audi Forum and VW’s vast Autostadt complex (with its very own Museum, the Zeithaus).
The 5 greatest car museums in Europe ranked for the international museum day
The reason why the traditional public car museums beat them on this list is diversity. Factory museums can’t deny their primary purpose: to sell cars. Hence the Museum part gets a relatively small share of the BMW World or Autostadt experience. It does not help that only one brand is featured (or a few brands at best) with a limited timeline and /or scope. The two factory Museums in this are the ones where I felt the least as corporate communication. Alfa and Mercedes simply have a long and glorious past, and they showcase their achievements with style. In the case of Merc, even with some understatement. I will explain that later, let’s start with the best factory museum in the whole world.
The Mercedes Museum is located at Mercedes’s headquarters in Stuttgart, next to the Factory and the Mercedes Arena (address is 100 Mercedesstrasse (what else?), 70372 Stuttgart). To best describe a Museum, picture this: a professional marketing division of one of the world’s largest and most successful premium brands with the most illustrious history puts all its efforts to design and build the best museum possible.
The Mercedes Museum transpires the strive for perfection: its architecture is truly fascinating as it offers a flawless view from every angle as the visitors wander around the corridors. Every detail is in place, and even outside the field of vision, not a single detail would distract from the immersive experience. The modern building is true architect porn, perfected in its entirety to produce the most optimal spectacle.
The ingenuity of architecture does not stop with the design finesse. Every single detail is thought out to perfection. When arriving, the experience encapsulates well before the elevators: already in the parking lot, famous cars await the visitors in glass cages. In 2017, I got to park right beside DTM champion Bernd Schneider; in 2018, I only got a pace car SLS.
The rest of the exhibition is not that immersive (or interactive), but the Museum ticks the right boxes with a children’s corner, private cinema and a racing simulator.
The long history of Mercedes is a guarantee for a complete timeline, from the 135 years old Patentwagen to the concept cars of the near future. It’s quite hard to list all the achievements without bragging.
There are bikes, planes and trucks, already from the early 20th century, but up to the current utility vehicles.
There is a crazy secret weapon on the wall that was designed by Ferdinand Porsche to break all records. The following parking place is awarded to the W125 Rekordwagen, whose speed record on a public road lasted for 80 years. There are iconic cars from every decade and one-off specials like the Gullwing concept that belonged to Mr Uhlenhaut, the head of the racing programme.
Another area where the Mercedes Museum beats many other great museums is the variation of exhibits, with periodic temporary exhibitions.
It is difficult to say whether the quantity or quality is more astonishing in the Mercedes Museum. It’s not unrivalled in its pursuit of perfection. Quite a few national museums and private collections go beyond storing and presenting national cultural heritage. The National Museum of Italy in Turin or the Dutch Lowman Collection also have a great design. Also, the museums of many competing brands are conceived and accented by talented professional designers. The really impressive ingredient is the brand’s history, as Mercedes stormed and often reached the peak, and it competed almost everywhere throughout the decades. Speed record in the ’30s, which remained valid until today, unrivalled racing record, is hardly any area where the brand did not excel. For me, the most impressive aspect is still what the Museum did not expose, as it shows only a fraction of Mercedes’s past, present and success.
There is no cult built around personalities, even if Mercedes employed legendary engineers and designers such as Ferdinand Porsche, Paul Bracq (one of the first real star designers) and Bruno Sacco, the leading innovator of the brand’s design and today’s form language. I missed a number of brilliant concept cars from the Museum, such as the recent Maybach Coupe.
I did not encounter the ground-breaking or category-creating models, no Maybach, Smart, DKW or anything from the Chrysler group. There must be at least a dozen more Formula-1 champion cars that were not on display. I am pretty sure that any other brand would probably feature them as the most cherished trophies. Thus the most impressive aspect of the Mercedes Museum for me is what has not been included in the exhibition but would steal the show at any other museum.
For the best museum on our list, you can scroll down or click the article below. It may not be that much of a surprise…
The 5 best car museums in Europe: Nr. 1: Cité de l’Automobile, Mulhouse, France
