The first car in history
Benz's three-wheeled Patent-Motorwagen of 1886 โ where everything began.
Julian Herzog (Website) โ CC BY 4.0 ยท Alexander Migl โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Alexander-93 โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Alexander-93 โ CC BY-SA 4.0
Mercedes is bigger and broader: the whole automobile's history, not one marque, needing three hours across nine floors. Porsche is smaller, sharply focused on sport and speed โ an intense ninety minutes. Speed obsessives start at Porsche; everyone else, Mercedes first.
More than expected: the telling is social โ how the car changed life, war and cities โ with the vehicles as landmarks of their eras. With the Arabic guide it becomes a century's story. Outright machine-haters should give their hours to the other Stuttgart.
S1 to Neckarpark station, then signposted minutes on foot. Ample parking by car. The stadium and event grounds are neighbours โ check match days to dodge crowds.
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In the city where the automobile was born stands the world's greatest car museum: here Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler invented the car in 1886, and the museum tells the story from horse to hydrogen through 160 legendary vehicles on nine floors. The building is a wonder itself: a double helix with hardly a corner, begun at the top via a time-capsule lift and descending through the decades โ emperors' and popes' cars, the legendary Silver Arrows racers, the trucks and buses that moved the world, and the first automobile ever made. The excellent audio guide comes in Arabic too โ one of the few German museums fully covered in Arabic. For car lovers this is obligatory pilgrimage; for everyone else, the twentieth century's history taught from the driver's seat. With the Porsche Museum across town, Stuttgart's car day is complete.
Benz's three-wheeled Patent-Motorwagen of 1886 โ where everything began.
You descend nine floors of time from the top โ architecture that narrates.
The legendary racers that ruled the circuits before the war and after.
Vehicles of emperors, popes and Japan's monarchs โ history in the paintwork.
Mercedesstrasse 100, 70372 Stuttgart