Porsche Museum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen

In late January our neighbor in Oakland alerted us about the opening of the brand new Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. The weather was fair today and we traveled to the museum using (once again) the hugely discounted Baden-Württemberg tickets from Deutsche Bahn (1 day travel for 5 persons on regional trains within BW for 28€, including local city transportation). The journey to the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof took slightly less than an hour, and after waiting for about 15 minutes for a local tram, we were at the museum approximately an hour and a half after we left Karlsruhe.

The museum is really easy to get to by public transportation. The tram stop is right outside the museum's main entrance. Of course, the visitor parking lot was filled with Mercedes-Benzs, Porsches and BMWs (hey, this is Deutschland); but they were all eclipsed by a white Lamborghini Diablo with a Swiss license plate. It must have costed the owner a fortune to drive the 6-litre V12 machine to the museum (even though Zürich is only 200 or so kilometers away from Stuttgart).

The front entrance is certainly not as grand as that of the Mercedes-Benz Museum across town. In fact, the design of Porsche Museum appears to give the least amount of floor space to the ground floor. The museum cramps the ticket office, audio-gadget pick-up, a cafeteria, cloak room, gift shop, a coffee bar (which also serves as a viewing area of the shop where older Porsches are restored). I suspect the front area would get chaotic once the tourists begin arriving in droves this summer.

After we purchased the tickets (8€ per adults, kids under 14 are free), Gabriel and Jocelyn wanted to have lunch. The cafeteria on the ground floor, Boxenstopp, offers pub fare at reasonable prices. The kids had a hearty Wiener schnitzel. We later found out that there is a restaurant in the museum, but we were not prepared to have the ultimate Porsche experience of 40€ for a steak in any case.



Here are a few more pictures Glenda took at the museum (Jocelyn likes the 917 "pink pig", primarily for its color). More pictures can be found here.



The museum is smaller than the M-B Museum, and we finished browsing through after a couple of hours. But Gabriel loves the car here more than those at the M-B Museum and didn't want to leave.

Our impression? The museum is well worth a visit. But I enjoyed the M-B Museum more. The displays, particularly the ones on the mechanical designs, are not as informative as those at M-B. Also a visit to the M-B Museum is a tour of the automobile history, and the Porsche's history is not as rich as its rival across town.