Visiting a prosperous, well-ordered German City is always great, so I skipped the odd afternoon at the R & T exhibition to explore Stuttgart.
It was lovely to sit in the sun, eating apfelstrdel in the Schloss area, and I also visited the Mercedes Museaum. In truth, I've never been
that interested in cars, but my mum loves her little A-Class, and Mercedes are an icon of engineering and design.
The museum is pretty amazing (the photo above is not mine, but the rest are). I loved the elevators, that were something from a Fritz Lang film
the first engine
the first cars
the first motorcycle
and the early Merc's
The fantastic supercharged cars of the '20's & 30'S
The aero engines of the 40's (sorry, but I took no pictures)... but I did take a pic of this cute 50's van
The gull-wing 60's and the 'bad guys'car
In the 70's, I vagely remember the most glamorous of my parents friends driving one of these 'pagoda roof' Merc's
I had a go in the race simulator, and couldn't stop laughing
as I skid through turns in a 30's Silver Arrow racer, or had a go round
Monte Carlo in an F1 car. Two people sit in the simulator, and my companion
turned out to be a good German gentleman who'd raced Porsche’s round Le Mans (I apologised for
my bad driving).
When my dad was 5yrs old, he remembers that his dad took him to a race meeting where he saw the 1936 Mercedes and Auto-Unions cream the old-fashioned British cars. These cars are in the museum too
The clever Germans end the museum with a showroom of their
latest cars. I can tell you that after seeing their greats from the
past, I was ready to sign up for anything as I sat in their latest SLK or new
C-class coupe.
My only reservation was that my family are dyed-in-the-wool MG, Triumph, Jag or BMW people (only my mum has gone
Mercedes).
The museum reminded me of the restless nature of
the clever German people. This reminded me of how
my own company, New House is always seeking improvement too, and believe it's important to keep presenting the very best in new design to the customer.
