The Zeithaus Museum, Wolfsburg

Volkswagen's second museum in Wolfsburg is the Zeithaus in the Autostadt. The Autostadt is not a museum, not an exhibition centre, and not the Volkswagen Group's corporate headquarters, but an immersive automotive experience. Set in beautiful landscaped gardens are modernist pavilions, each dedicated to one of the Volkswagen Group's brands. Two glass tower blocks hold cars waiting for collection by their new owners. Customers can book a room at the Ritz while they wait for their car to be customized. There is a also a driving track and across the canal stands the enormous Volkswagen factory. https://www.autostadt.de/en/explore-the-autostadt/zeithaus

Entry hall interior

Looking towards the Audi pavilion and the greenhouse tunnel.

The Seat pavilion

The Autostadt Ritz Hotel

Ducati exhibit

Premium Clubhouse overshadowed by the smokestacks of the factory.

Porsche pavilion

Display inside the Porsche pavilion

The Zeithaus Museum

The Zeithaus Museum is organized into two collections. The Design Icons collection showcases historically important vehicles in a contemporary art setting spread over three floors. Each car is extensively documented, explaining its importance and its place in history. It is, in my opinion, probably the best auto museum in the world.

1912 Bugatti Landau. A typical of example of early cars with a coach-like body. Additionally, cars like this were intended to be driven by a chauffeur.

1924 Lancia Lambda. The Lancia Lambda pioneered the low slung chassis and load bearing body. It also featured independent suspension and four-wheel brakes. Its long, low look in an era when bigger was better, didn't do any favours.

1924 Hanomag 2/10PS 'Kommisbrot' reintroduced the idea of the rear engine and the budget 'people's' car. It would soon be copied and improved on, most famously by Volkswagen themselves.

1931 MG M-Type Midget. A British classic sportscar that was small and cheap enough for a well-to-do young man.

1932 Hispanio-Suiza cabriolet. A luxury style icon of the Great Gatsby era.

1938 BMW 327. The streamlining era of the 1930s is epitomized by the beautiful BMW 327 roadster. BMW had grown from very humble beginnings manufacturing Austin 7's under license to become a premium sportscar maker by this time.

1939 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic. THE pinnacle of the pre-war French streamline movement. Only four examples were built with this luxury, custom bodywork. This is a replica body fitted over a Type 57 chassis.

1950 Borgward Hansa 1500. Carl Borgward introduced Germany to the ponton body style in 1949. Within a decade the ponton body would become the standard.

1959 Cadillac Eldorado. The epitome of American post-war styling - wings, fins, huge size. A whale on wheels.

The archetypical Porsche 911. Taking Volkswagen's budget car heritage to sportscar luxury.

1960s and 70s sports performance for the people. The Jaguar E-Type and the Opel Capri.

1967 Lamborghini Miura

Bentley

Bentley and Volkswagen

Volkswagen Beetle in gold and diamonds

1964 Volkswagen T2 Transport and Beach Buggy.

Icons of streamlining. The unlucky Chrysler Airflow was too advanced for customers when introduced in 1934, which led to its restyling to a more conventional appearance. This it the 1937 model.

Perfection on wheels. Ferry Porsche's immortal 1952 Porsche 356A.



1956 Citroen DS. Possibly the most amazing car ever built. Unveiled at the Paris Motor Show in 1955, the DS was so far ahead of its time it could have been designed by aliens (or the French).

The Car Collection

The Zeithaus museum collection is displayed across from the Design Icons in a three story glass pavilion. Like the Design Icons, the cars are thoughtfully selected and displayed with appropriate background and context.

1888 Benz Patentwagen. The starting point for the invention that took over the world.

1905 Laurin and Klement. The Laurin and Klement company were a pioneering Czech automobile company who would later be absorbed into the Skoda industrial conglomerate. Skoda became a nationalized auto company in Czechoslovakia after the Second World War but are now part of the Volkswagen Group.

1914 Model T Ford. The first mass produced car.

1938 Volkswagen Beetle

The classic Volkswagen Kombi

1962 Volkswagen Type 3.

1970 Volkswagen Type 412

Volkswagen outdoors - Manx beach buggy and the "Thing"

Borgward Isabella. Probably Carl Borgward's crowning achievement.

1963 BMW 1500. When the German government and banks forced Borgward into bankruptcy, Mercedes-Benz swooped in and gobbled up what it could for a song. Some employees went across to BMW however where they applied their knowledge to BMW's rather unsatisfactory auto division. The result was the revolutionary BMW 1500, the car that saved BMW. People joked that the car was Borgward reborn.

Two mini cars of the 1960s, the Austin Mini and the Fiat 600.

American luxury. 1930 Cadillac.

Versus American austerity. 1927 Chevrolet.

1931 DKW F1. DKW's pioneering front wheel drive F1. It is from this car that all modern Audis and Volkswagens evolved from, while Ferdinand Porsche's revolutionary rear-engined design has fallen by the wayside.

1937 Cord 812. An art deco styling gem from America. The Cord featured front wheel drive, which was something of a novelty in the US.

1928 Alvis FWD. Alvis introduced the world's first front wheel drive production car in 1928. 150 cars were built until the car was withdrawn in 1931. Unlike DKW, which introduced the Front 1 in 1931 the Alvis was designed and built specifically as sportscar (building on contemporary racing experience), but it was not a success and was too expensive.br />
1951 Borgward Hansa 1500 cabriolet.

The cabriolet was bodied by Hebmuller.

1949 Volkswagen Beetle cabriolet (bodied by Karmann).

These two cars featured in a Deutsche Weld report.

1972 NSU Ro80. NSU's pioneering rotary engined car.

Tatra's contribution to automotive history, the 1945 Tatra T87



1964 Chevrolet Corvair, the car Ralph Nader slandered as 'unsafe at any speed' (actually that is not true. Nader's book was critical of the poor safety record of ALL American cars but people only remembered the Corvair).

1954 Chevrolet Corvette.

Another People's Car - the East German Trabant



Matra Murena



1931 Bugatti Royale

Cars for the super rich

1922 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost

The Volkswagen factory and the canal

Volkswagen AutoMuseum, Wolfsburg

I had high expectations for the Volkswagen AutoMuseum in Wolfsburg, Germany. As readers of this blog know I am very interested in the evolution of the Volkswagen in the 1930s and the car's extraordinary post-war survival. I expected that Volkswagen's AutoMuseum would be able to showcase that critical period of the company's history. But sadly there was none of that and, for me, the museum was a great disappointment.

The museum's treatment of the early years of Volkswagen is sketchy at best. The entire period of the car's development, which of course took place as a Nazi project, is skimmed through. Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche's contribution, so fundamental to the company's history, is given very short shrift. Nor were there any of the company's early cars and reproductions on display. Instead the beetle, one of the world's most important motorcars, is introduced with a lackluster line up of a post-war split, an oval window and a Super Bug. That's it. The information sheets on each car were also spartan and uninteresting. This was the Tatra Museum over again.

The Karmann Ghia and coach-built display was also meagre and lifeless, again presented without any historical context. It was only when the display gets to the modern era of the Golf and the many interesting prototypes Volkswagen experimented with in the 1960s and 70s was there any sense of enthusiasm. Perhaps the company feels it is on safer ground here.

Finally, what does any good museum need?  A giftshop. As disappointed as I was I would still have browsed through the books and memorabilia, but no. There was only a small display window and postcard stand beside the ticket desk. http://automuseum.volkswagen.de/en/the-museum.html

But although the AutoMuseum collection was disappointing, Volkswagen has a second museum in Wolfsburg, the Zeithaus within the Autostadt complext and that is an entirely different story....

A modern Volkswagen concept car opens the collection.

Where it begins .... and it could not be more disappointing. Is this really the best that Volkswagen can do to showcase the development of one of the world's most important motor vehicles.

Volkswagen Beetle row

Karmann cabriolet. Volkswagen outsourced construction of the cabriolet model to Karmann Karosserie of Osnabruck. Karmann had pioneered the folding cabriolet top in the 1930s and went on to build cabriolet models for dozens of companies, but the Volkswagen contract came to dominate the company. They built VW cabriolet's until the beetle was withdrawn, plus the two Karmann Ghia models, Porsche 356s and 911s, and even Type 4 campervans. The company eventually went bankrupt in 2009 and was swallowed up by the Volkswagen Group.

Volkswagen cabriolets

Hebmuller four door police kubel

1953 Hebmuller four door taxi. Hebmuller was another independent karosseriewerkes that manufactured variant bodies for Volkswagen. In 1949 they were contracted to build a neat two seater roadster version of the beetle but went bankrupt after only 696 were built. Hebmuller also built a four door taxi beetle.

Volkswagen coachbuilts -Dannerhausen and Stauss, Ghia Aigle and Rometsch.

Rometsch Lawrence

1956 Volkswagen Ghia Aigle

1951 Dannenhauer und Stauss. The Dannenhauer and Stauss karosseriewerkes began fitting these neat custom roadster bodies onto Volkswagen beetle running gear. Each car was handmade; the panels being handbeaten onto the frame, consequently they were an expensive vehicle at three times the price of a standard beetle. About 100 cars were built before the arrival of the VW Karmann Ghia in 1957 put them out of business. 

Volkswagen Karmann Ghia's - and that's it. Nothing explained.

1955 Volkswagen EA 47-12 prototype

By the mid 1950s Volkswagen began to investigate modernizing and replacing the beetle. The Italian carosserie Ghia, who had just styled the beautiful Karmann Ghia for Volkswagen, developed the concept into a four seater sedan. Fifteen cars were built but Volkswagen decided to continue with the beetle. 

The military section - 1944 Schwimwagen and military kommanderwagen

1944 Kubelwagen, the ubiquitous German 'jeep' of the Second World War. It served on all fronts with distinction.

The Puma sportscar was built in Brazil on a Volkswagen beetle running gear. Puma's had originally been built on DKW-Vemag running gear until Volkswagen purchased Auto-Union in 1965.

Brazilian Volkswagen SP2

Volkswagen SP2

Volkswagen Type Variant

Late model 1966 Type 3 411 variant from South America

1973 Volkswagen 412 Variant

Volkswagen Type 2 transporters. The iconic Type 2 bus was put to so many different uses but it is colloquially known everywhere as the 'kombi.'

A Volkswagen utility and Samba bus



Fridolen van

1973 four door K 70 L sedan prototype (likely based on an Audi or NSU design)

1973 Volkswagen Scirocco I

1972 Volkswagen Passat

2003 Volkswagen W12 Coupe

Volkswagen XL1 electric concept vehicle and the Volkswagen 1 Litre trial vehicle

1963 Volkswagen EA 128 prototype. This large four door sedan was intended for the US market, hence its substantial proportions. The car was powered by a six cylinder Porsche boxer engine from the 911.

Volkswagen Golf, the car that saved Volkswagen.

This 1976 concept vehicle is built over a very early beetle running gear. Seems a bit of a waste to me....

Some more links: https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2016/10/11/a-tour-of-vws-other-museum-in-wolfsburg-the-stiftung-automuseum-volkswagen/