Friday 13th September

Driving along the motorway from Ettlingen towards Stuttgart I notice the clock said Friday 13th September. Hope nothing goes wrong today.

First view approaching the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, no problem, found the place, easy peasy. Parking was another matter.

The museum has underground parking, max height 2.1m so slightly not enough for Frankie. There are Porsche buildings all around, even the Underground station is called Porscheplatz.

It looks like if you purchased a Porsche you can park it on the front but unfortunately Frankie was not welcome here. We followed the road round and noticed there were dozens of cars parked up on the pavement so about half a mile from the museum I spotted a lovely bit of empty pavement and hefted Frankie up onto the kerb and half off the road. Don’t worry, it’ll be alright, I said. 

Arrive at the museum ticket counter and the lady asks if we have parked out on the street, I admitted to being a naughty boy and asked if there was somewhere I could park a motorhome. She shuddered, pulled a face and quickly masked it with a smile, of course there is, here is a map, you must go here and here and up there and around there. Easy. Then I made a blunder, I let Lucy stay at the museum while I went “all the way back” to Frankie. Started off fine, put a point into Stella and off we went. Waved at Lucy as we went past and then got directed into a myriad of narrow roads with cars parked either side. At one point I had to tell a delivery driver to get out and see me through the tiny gap he had left me. The road ended in a large car park with cars parked at the end of lines making it very difficult to get round and back the way I came. Eventually I manned up and asked the way. Poor lad didn’t speak a word of German (my version) and in the end offered to take me to the right place. 

He directed me down a very narrow road, cars one side, deep ditch and tree branches the other but we did get to the motorhome area. Four bays all chained off, luckily the receptionist had given me the combination for the padlock so remove the chain, pull forward and then reverse into a bay and smash the near side wheel arch on a post. Scheisse, und dubble scheisse and other words I don’t know the German for.

Not very happy, I went looking for Lucy.

Anyway, we got into the museum and the very first car we see is this one from 1898. It is the worlds first electric car designed by Ferdinand Porsche and capable of travelling 80km at a speed of 25km/h.

And in 1900 he’s designing hub motors, this one has a power output of 1.8kW.

And then we get to this. Polished to within an inch of it’s life, absolutely perfect condition and I’m guessing far better than it rolled out of the factory and can I remember what it is? Not a hope. I’m not a car buff but have taken photos of most of the cars in the museum and I was going to post all of them for you, but once you’ve seem one 911, you’ve seen them all (sorry Nick).

This was the very first car with the Porsche name on it. Previously, Porsche had worked for other companies.

All the exhibits are very well laid out, in immaculate condition and are mostly in running condition.

It’s really difficult to weed out the better cars because there really are so many fantastic shapes, I’ll show you some of the faster looking ones.

And this is as near as you’re getting to beer of the day. Warsteiner, it’s £1.95 for a 600ml bottle in Sainsbury’s.

I got fed up in the end of Lucy saying “Ooh, this is the one I like” but I had to agree on this one, it’s a Porsche Carrera GT (says so on the back).

Another general view. Mark’s top tip; don’t go with anyone interested in cars, you’ll be stuck in there for days, playing and replaying the audio guide, watching the videos and kicking tyres until the cows come home. Even we spent nearly 3 hours in the museum. My favourite was the sky blue and orange one sponsored by Gulf, no idea of the model but it started with a 9

Back at Frankie we tried to work out what to do. There are no pleasant looking stellplatz within 20 miles, we are aiming to go a bit Southish at the moment and after looking at Park4Night found that someone did manage to stay here the night so that’s what we are doing. Also, since we are parked right next door to the Underground station we decided to travel into Stuttgart and wander around.

Not the best idea. Visiting any town or city without a plan is bound to fail, we ended up walking up and down the main shopping centre, miles long and full of all the people missing from Karlsruhe. It really was a very busy city. You get no photos, you’ve all seen shops before although some of you may have forgotten Woolworths, C&A, Etam and Tchibo.