The Gazette - This year Southwest Germany celebrates the automobile's 125th birthday in its birth place, the state of Baden-Württemberg. There'll be events, races, speeches and brass bands. Visitors who may not have the time to attend them all should visit the grand museums of the three monarchs: BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche.
I visited one of the original workshops where cars began. The other workshop was in another town. You see, the automobile had two birthplaces and two fathers. In the 1880s two inventors, Carl Benz and Otto Daimler laboured 130 kilometres apart, one in Mannheim, the other in Stuttgart. They never met. In 1885 Daimler displayed the world's first gas-operated vehicle, a two-wheeled motorcycle with the engine mounted on a wooden frame. Next year he demonstrated a real car, a four wheel buggy powered by a single cylinder motor. But meanwhile Benz had registered a patent for an automobile, even though he hadn't built it yet. So, Daimler won in the workshop, Benz in the patent office.
The competition ended in 1926 when rough times forced the merger of Benz and Daimler. They also combined their trade marks. Benz gave its name, Daimler the threepointed star of Mercedes fame. (Why Mercedes? In 1900 Otto Jellinek - fan, race driver, and dealer of Daimler cars - ordered 36 new ones, so new that they deserved a distinguishing name. As the directors argued after dinner at the Jellineks', a sleepy little girl appeared on the stairs. "Go back to bed, Mercedes," said her father. Silence. Then "But of course! Name the new line Mercedes!" The first Mercedes was designed by Wilhelm Maybach, Daimler's fellow inventor for 35 years.)
The exhibits in the new Mercedes-Benz Museum range from the simplest to the biggest - from Daimler's twowheeler to the giant, sleek would-be record challenger that never got the chance to challenge because Germany ran out of fuel during the war. The building rises as a futuristic showcase overlooking a wide curve of the Autobahn. Not to be outdone, Porsche commissioned another architectural wonder overlooking another wide expressway.
A few hundred kilometres away, in Munich, the Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) erected its whirlwind-shaped building.
The museums all have workshops which, unlike other repair places hidden in basements, are open to view behind glass walls. There's not a drop of oil on the floor. The car under repair is draped, exposing only the critical part, as in an operating room.
Mercedes-Benz has a special unit, the Mercedes-Benz Classic, that deals with cars more than 20 years old. These are being fixed and shined up to sit in the museum. Others are restored either by the owner's request, or to be sold to collectors.
A working replica of the 1886 Benz Patent Motorwagen, which moves at the original 16 km/h speed, costs $91,000. A 1933 Mercedes-Benz 290 Cabriolet restored like new costs $122,000.
If you bring in your own old beauty, say, a 600 series sedan, the technicians may operate on it for a year and a half, to the tune of just over a million dollars. Parts for old or rare models will be manufactured to specs, the leather on the seats will match the original.
Porsche and BMW, too, have workshops that rejuvenate classics. Depending on the year and number of cars manufactured in the series, the price of a good-as-new antique may run to $2 million.
BMW's building suggests power with its daring vortex shape, but most visitors ignore the futuristic interior as their eyes lock on the cars. BMW has dedicated itself to luxury and keeps an air of retro in the elegant vehicles.
At the other end of the range, the muscles bulge on the motorcycles that many feel made BMW famous. The most spectacular model on show is the Egg, the streamlined bike built for Ernst Jakob Henne, the "fastest man in the world" in the thirties.
Like all good museums, these can be exhausting, but don't go to sleep. There's more to see.
