Tuesday 8th October
After a couple of days freezing cold we have moved north to just outside Stuttgart which is over 1000 feet lower in elevation than Ulm. It is also so much warmer.
We’re on a very small stellplatz in Fellbach, 2.5 miles out of the city, once again we grabbed the last spot free. We get free wifi and waste facilities. The water is just 50ç for 80l and the nightly charge is €5.
We took a walk into the town, it was a bit odd in that all the shops were laid out in one long road but interspersed with houses so not really a shopping street. The whole town seems to be a place to live in close to the main city. We found this vegetable vending machine whilst out, potatoes, brussel sprouts, carrots and onions seem OK. We couldn’t work out how smashed up the eggs would be.
Fellbach has some very good travel options. Bus, train and tram all go into the city. ere’s our tram, about €9 for the two of us return but we saw no one validate a ticket or even look like they were going to get checked. The Germans just seem to be so law abiding. We have a tram every ten minutes, need to change in town and we end up….
…outside the Mercedes Benz Museum, a rather unique shaped building. Four weeks ago we went to the Porsche museum and our tickets there gave us a 25% reduction on entry for this place. You may think that we are here because I am a car nut but you’ll find that Lucy is far more interested than me, I like the engineering, she likes the pretty colours.
The first gasoline powered car ever made, I think we had a table mat of this one when I was a wee laddie.
And this is the engine that started it all, a four stroke single cylinder engine made by Daimler.
Chitty chitty bang bang. No idea what this really was because I forgot to have a look when I got close. Some of these photos of the cars look like models, I can assure you that they are all full sized cars, mostly original with the occasional recreation.
His and hers.
And another glorious car. As I said, I’m not a car buff, I’m not going to attempt to identify this car but it is a Benz, it might even be a Mercedes Benz but I got a bit confused with that story.
the Mercedes-Benz 300SL, I did concentrate on something. Made between 1954 to 1957 the SL stands for super light, the whole chassis is a tubular welded space frame which left no room for conventional doors. It’s hard to believe that it is older than me and has far fewer mechanical problems to contend with.
This is the SLR version, debuted in the 1955 Milia Miglia, notable drivers included Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio.
And then I caught Lucy trying to work out how to climb in without doing herself a mischief.
This was Lucy’s favourite colour car, in real life it was a bit greener than this.
You’re not getting photos of every car in the museum, just the ones that really stood out like this concept car…
…or this electric car.
After three hours we got to the racing cars…
…honestly, these are not models. The museum is a very quirky shape inside and out and you get wonderful views of some of the cars from above.
This is Nico Rosburgs Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid in which he won the World Championship in 2017 before retiring five days later. With this model Mercedes won 19 out of the 21 races that year.
This is the Mercedes Benz T80 designed by Ferdinand Porsche powered by a DB603 aero engine developing 3,000 hp. It became the worlds fastest car on four wheels reaching a speed of 373mph in early 1940.
The Mercedes Benz W125 with it’s 12 cylinder engine reached an average of 268.9mph on a public road in 1938, a world record which stood for nearly 80 years until Frankie had a go at stretching his legs.
My new car, if it had been in Lucy’s new favourite colour it really would be mine.
It’s not easy spending over four hours looking at cars, we had to have a break. I’ve got the blueberry cheesecake whilst Lucy had the apple and plum crumble. Nearly forgot, we had beer as well.
Is there room in my life for another Stella?
NO.
We spent nearly five hours in the Mercedes Benz museum, we could have spent far, far longer. There was so much information including displays which bought various decades into life and the audio guides had a wealth of additional information on the technical side of things. Well worth visiting and I haven’t spoilt it by showing you too many photos.
We have a ferry to catch on Sunday from Calais, then a couple of weeks at home and then off to Spain on the 1st November for the best part of six months. I don’t expect to be doing anything exciting between now and the rally other than taking the grandchildren away for a week. This might be the last blog for a while, if anything exciting happens in the next couple of days I will let you know but for now – schonentag, tchuss, caio caio and auf weidersehen.
Thank you for the informative and entertaining blogs as well as the great photos.
I look forward to hearing about the Spanish adventure from November.