These are old posts from the now defunct www.overland.kinja.com. Rescued by a good person before the ship went down.
I’m just posting them here for my own record…
Shameless BMW and Porsche museum photo dump!
For me, the 8 series is BMW’s greatest shape. Shame I can’t get past the potentially ruinous maintenance costs, how complex and heavy they are, and nearly all are autos…
The 507 looks very American in this colour I think. Bit like a Vette or a Cobra.
I am biased, but there is something very ‘right’ about this.
The M635CSi’s infamous metric wheels and TRX tyres. I ended up with a set of these when I read an ebay listing wrong, thinking it said 4 15 BMW wheels (4 x 15 inch). I wondered why they were so cheap!
The buildings themselves are pretty ace as well.
BMW Welt is right next to the site of the infamous 1972 Olympics, worth a wander round too.
A slight blip in the sunny Australian weather we had been taking with us all round Europe meant the perfect day to head over to Stuttgart and visit the Porsche museum.
Driving to Stuttgart, i was sitting just over 150km/h which was about my happy cruising speed by now. A Polizei VW Transporter van shot passed me and immediately pulled in front of me to make way for an Audi Avant bearing down on him that rocketed passed probably north of 200km/h, and it was raining. “That was weird” I said to N, as the strangeness of the situation dawned on me, but quite normal for Germany.
Most of the proper rocketships in the fast lane were Audi/BMW/Merc wagons, which just reinforces the idea to me that an Avant, Touring or Wagen is the coolest way to buy German metal.
As I said I found cruising at about 150 km/hr worked about right for the Leon and I. You could pull out into the fast lane to overtake someone, the lane being completely clear in your mirror as far as you can see, and wind up to about 170km/hr only to glance back in your mirror to now find a 911 hangin just off you back bumper patiently waiting for you to get your asthmatic arse out of the way…
With the escalating ‘power wars’ between certain manufacturers of the past 10 odd years, I’ve often wondered how an 500 bhp sedan is anything more than just an exercise in frustration? However having now seen these machines in their natural environment it kind of answers at least part of the question of where you deploy such firepower, you use it to get back up to speed satisfyingly quickly after being delayed by a pesky SEAT TSi… In the end autobahns are great for what they were designed to do. Being able to seriously reduce your journey time, if you want to.
How many cylinders…?
909 hillclimb special, 384kg, aluminium space frame.
Helmut Marko (of Red Bull ‘fame’) I’m presuming.
The worlds greatest race car?
914/8
The 917’s were incredibly curvaceous up close.
Dakar 959 still sporting battle scars.
Out of the two museums I preferred the Porsche, and N preferred the BMW. The BMW is better stylistically and much better lit and has more room around the cars. However for a geek like me it was lacking a little in content. It has all of BMW’s greatest hits for sure, but very few B sides or hidden tracks. If it had one more room of oddities that would have made all the difference for me, an E12 M535i, a South African E30 335i, a 745i and a E92 320Si. And just leave the bonnets up. A few prototypes that didn’t make production would have been cool. Just show me the M8 dammit! I know it’s here…
So I preferred the Porsche museum for it’s range and variety. I think Porsche has done a better job of holding onto/acquiring it’s heritage. I suspect there is a lot of BMW early cars and historical race cars in private hands.
However I don’t want to sound churlish, both museums are great and are well worth a visit.
So Europe has a unique mix of scenery, culture, history, great driving roads and excellent food and drink. However it will be a newsflash to no-one that it is expensive. I would love to go back to Germany or the Basque region of Spain, but realistically that won’t happen anytime soon. However I was glad we went and of the experiences we had. Managed to get home in time to watch Bathurst too!