The Technik Museum Speyer’s ongoing Legends on Wheels exhibition showcases the fascinating evolution of Mercedes trucks, from the first motorised transport vehicles to modern high-tech machines. This special exhibition features impressive originals spanning more than 120 years of commercial vehicle history, including pioneering models, legendary workhorses, and visionary concepts of the future, but we also found a couple of exciting specimens among the permanent exhibition.
We love revisiting the Technical Museum in Sinsheim and Speyer: their permanent exhibitions are a real treat, and both sites host temporary exhibitions regularly. The origins of the Museum are explained in our first Sinsheim article, which is more for car maniacs, with halls loaded with incredible machinery, from supercars through dragsters, tanks, helicopters and supersonic passenger planes. If there is anything the Museum could have used, it was space. And this is what you will find in Speyer, as the new site is about space, and in every sense of the word. You get a Jumbo Jet, an Antonov and boats, including a modern-age diesel-electric Submarine, and of course, an actual Space Shuttle from the Soviet Union.
The Speyer site usually hosts temporary exhibitions next to the Space Shuttle, and the Legends on Wheels exhibition enlisted 18 vehicles from 1899 to 2024 in this hall. The vehicles encompass early Daimler trucks to modern concept vehicles, and the exhibition shows how technology, design, and innovation have evolved across generations.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is the Daimler cardan truck from 1899 – the oldest vehicle on display. In a glass workshop, you can watch this historic piece being restored to get it running again by the end of the exhibition. Legendary Unimogs are also on display – versatile all-rounders used worldwide.
Technical innovations such as the Mercedes-Benz LP 333 “Taußendfüßler” or the powerful Mercedes-Benz 1831 LS demonstrate how advanced commercial vehicles already were in their time. The Mercedes-Benz Future Truck from 2014 offers a glimpse into the future of automated driving. Ironically, the coolest Mercedes Truck of the site was not part of this exhibition:
As for the rest of the Museum, the car fleet isn’t as great as in Sinsheim, but we could still spot the obligatory exhibits, like the Gullwing or the 356.
