It's All About the Cars

Outside the BMW Museum
Munich, Germany

Hey everyone, it’s Joe here with another guest post. My brother Jason recently came out for a couple weeks and we did some tours of the BMW and Mercedes museums. Needless to say, Kelly wasn’t super excited about these events so I’m going to fill you in. We started off by visiting the BMW headquarters and museum in Munich. It was full of tons of gorgeous BMWs and Rolls-Royces (they are owned by the same company).

Airplane Engine
BMW Museum
Munich, Germany

They also have some awesome exhibits that display how their various models changed throughout the years and showed off their fancy new i8 prototype. Some have changed significantly since they originally built airplane engines… My favorite was definitely the 1956 BMW 507 but I will gladly take any car in the place and since BMW knows this they have a dealership with a test track right next door. We wandered over there and sat in some very expensive cars which was awesome. Jason even found 20 Euros but unfortunately that wasn’t enough to drive home in anything. :(

BMW 1956 507
BMW Museum
Munich, Germany

The Only Picture from the BMW Factory
Regensburg, Germany

A few days later we went on a tour of the BMW factory just outside of Regensburg and Jason got to see where his car was born. It was like being in an episode of How It’s Made! It was so cool to go behind the scenes and watch these giant machines toss around cars like they were nothing. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed so you will just have to visualize it in your head. We walked through the entire process of building a car from stamping out pieces from aluminum sheets to painting and installing the entire custom interior. Their factory produces about a car a minute and because of the cornucopia of configurations they typically only create 2 identical cars per year. That’s a lot of customization! Also while we were there our tour guide decided to fill us all in on what BMW stands for (apparently it’s not common knowledge). For those of you who don’t know it stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke in German but for some reason our guide translated it to Bavarian Engine Plant in English explaining that it was actually BEP in English. For the life of me I can’t figure out why she didn’t just translate it to Bavarian Motor Works which would keep the BMW acronym intact. It makes no sense!! Anyway, after our tour they gave us a bunch of brochures for building our very own BMW and even let us take some pictures with a few of the finished products.

1886 Benz Patent Motor Car
Mercedes Museum
Stuttgart, Germany

Our last stop on the cars of Germany tour was the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart. This museum had a very different focus than the BMW museum. The BMW museum focused on showcasing their cars and filled the rooms with as many as possible. Mercedes was more centered on providing a timeline of the development of the automobile and displayed cars that represented certain parts of their history. They also provided you with information about the world during various periods so you understood what was happening as Mercedes was producing cars. BMW also had a room with that went into their detailed history but it really wasn’t their main focus. The Mercedes museum started in the obvious spot with the invention of the automobile “by” Karl Benz. The reason for the quotes is that Karl Benz is remembered as the creator of the automobile based on a technicality in my mind. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach actually created the first internal combustion engine small enough to power a car and they retrofitted it into a carriage. Benz is more remembered because he built a vehicle around the engine (rather than adding one to an existing carriage design) and filed a patent for his creation.

1935 Mercedes Benz 500K Special Roadster
Mercedes Benz Museum
Stuttgart, Germany

It’s always amazing to find out some common knowledge isn’t so common. Throughout the rest of the museum Mercedes showed off all of the types of vehicles that they make from luxury cars to buses to the popemobile and even hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. All in all, we enjoyed exploring both museums but I would still pick a BMW over a Mercedes.

1980 Mercedes Benz 230G Popemobile for Pope John Paul II
Mercedes Muesum
Stuttgart, Germany

Useful Links!
Pictures from BMW in Munich
Pictures from Mercedes in Stuttgart
Mercedes Museum Visitor Information
BMW Welt (World) in Munich Visitor Information
BMW Plant in Regensburg Visitor Information