The Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim is a versatile technical museum, showcasing all kind of vehicles from bikes to the Concorde supersonic passenger airplane. It keeps dozens of exciting cars, such as F1 race cars and supercars, but it’s the variety that really strikes out in comparison to many other museums. It takes almost a full day just to browse through hundreds of elegant vintage cars, motorcycles high in horsepower, racy sports cars, colourful dragsters, powerful agricultural machines, Formula-1 legends, nostalgic racing bikes, steam locomotives, and an extensive militaria (tanks of all epochs, fighter planes, helicopters and other vehicles).
Besides many other vintage cars from all eras of automobile history and many other exhibit items, the Technik Museum Sinsheim accounts for the most extensive private collection of vintage Maybach, supercharged Mercedes, and Bugatti automobiles in Germany, in addition to several hundred motorcycles, aircraft, record vehicles, racing and sports cars, locomotives, military and utility cars, and engines.
The history of the Technik Museum Sinsheim dates back to the 80’s, when a private initiative was established to create the Technik Museum Sinsheim, that finally opened its doors for the first time in May 1981. With the increasing number of visitors, the Museum quickly extended its exhibition area from the initial 5,000 m² to more than 30,000 m². In addition, a second Museum was built in the center of Speyer in the early 1990s, when the possibilities of expansion in Sinsheim were nearly exhausted. Today the museum has more than 25,000 m² indoor space and over 150,000 m2 outdoor area, with some gigantic exhibits such as a Jumbo Jet or the Russian Buran space shuttle. But that is for another post… Coming back the Sinsheim facility, in 1999 the museum club managed to acquire a Russian Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic passenger aircraft. In a spectacular transport, the aircraft was transported from Moscow to Sinsheim over land and sea and mounted in starting position on the roof of one of the museum halls in early 2001. Enough room was left for the Concorde, and four years later this parking spot was filled when a Concorde was donated to the museum by Air France after the retirement of their Concorde fleet. The importance of this achievement can not be overstated.
Besides the legendary supersonic aircraft Concorde and Tupolev TU-144, there are many more icons of aviation history that can be admired and visited. If you ever kept scaled down models that were fixed a stick, well this is pretty much the same, only that the sticks are 10-20-meter-tall and a bit thicker too. More than 60 aircraft and helicopters are awaiting the visitors in the museum halls and on the open-air ground, many of them are accessible and it is quite an adventure to walk the shaky constructs hanging on a thread or a pole.
The Technik Museum Sinsheim also has a considerable collection of mobilised armed forces from the Second World War, encompassing tanks, aircraft, trucks, tractors and other utility vehicles. The collection is completed by numerous further vehicles, models, uniforms, documents and artefacts. It’s basically like my old toy chest came alive.
Egzostive.com is usually about cars, so lets get down to business, as Sinsheim has a lot to offer also for car maniacs. There is a permanent exhibition of over 300 vintage cars from all eras, from a Model T Ford to the recent times.
The Technik Museum claims to display the largest collection of American dream cars in Europe, in a fitting environment. From my memories of the major museums I visited, I could not contradict that, but it can not be compared to major US car meets. Apparently, Sinsheim offers that too every August, with these vehicles in action on the open grounds at the US car convention.
The car section of exhibition comprises almost everything that moves on wheels, from motor coach to Rolls-Royce luxury cars. There is a rolling stock of exhibits, as most exhibition pieces are frequently driven, and often trade places (unlike the planes on the poles, of course).
Sinsheim sports one of the most impressive collections of Mercedes-Benz cars in Germany (apart from the factory Museum in Stuttgart of course). One of the highlights of the museum is the collection of historical Mercedes automobiles, such as the beautifully elegant S, SS and SSK series from the 1920s and 1930s, that fit well with the Maybach-limousines. I also liked the experimental Project Car Brutus that is hosted in a dedicated room. It is based on a chassis with a 1907 chain drive that was used by fire departments in America. A 12-cylinder BMW aircraft engine was mounted onto this chassis, with a cylinder capacity of nearly 47 litres (from the 1st World War). The engine peaks 750 hp at 1700 rpm and throws flames that the organisers (ab)use to hold barbecue parties by the exhaust.
The Modern car section lists quite a few automotive wonders, such as the sleek Mclaren Mercedes SLR, the legendary Ferrari F40 (my all-time favourite car from Automotive history) or the oddball Vector W8, of which only 17 cars were produced.
With an output of 625 hp, the W8 accelerates in 3.9 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h and reaches a speed of 322km/h. Thanks to a predominantly Kevlar body, it weighs only 1504 kg. The interior of the super sports car is also fits to the futuristic exterior, with a confusing range of buttons and switches offered every imaginable modernist technical finesse of that time such as numeric locks instead of keyholes.
The Technik Museum Sinsheim devotes an important place for racing cars in its exhibition hall. In addition to many classic sports cars from makers such as Bugatti, Mercedes and many more, the Museum includes the largest permanent formula-1 exhibition in Europe in addition to an extensive collection of historic race cars.
I noted legends such as the Marlboro coloured McLaren Honda, Schumacher’s Benetton Renault or the Scuderia Ferrari, there is a bit for fans of all teams and epochs.
The center stage is taken by the record breaker “Blue Flame“, the fastest rocketpropelled surface-craft of all times. On October 7, 1970 the American Gary Gabelich set a fantastic new world record with this hybrid between car and rocket, when he reached an average speed of 1.014,656 km/h on the Bonneville salt flats.
As I browsed through the images and revisited memories of the Museum, I could not dismiss my mixed feelings about the Museum. In the epicentre of all main European routes, it is easier to pass by than to get around Sinsheim (or at least Heilbronn), wherever your road may lead. It’s impossible to miss the two supersonic passenger planes by the highway chasing each other in take-off angle. Sinsheim delivers that, and much more.
They got historical and modern airliners, trains, and a freakin’ Space Shuttle next door in Speyer (a real one, bought legally from the Russians). And the cars, I mean, its like they were selected specifically to impress even next to a fighter plane. The Museum is as colourful and thrilling as a theme park, and it also offers a lot of activities for children (of all age between 3 and 99 years), from IMAX movie theatre to a number of playground and activity areas. I simply can not find any good reason to pass, there is a lot for everybody.
FOR AN OVERVIEW OF ALL THE CAR MUSEUMS I EVER VISITED, CHECK OUT THE INTERACTIVE MAP:
