№55 — Mercedes Benz World

Mika Hakkinnen’s championship car from the “good old times” when cigarette companies were still allowed to advertise

I am not a car person. I do not really care what make it is or how fast it goes. I can also not tell the difference between a BMW 318i and a BMW 320d. The only thing a care about in a car is that it takes me from A to B without draining both gas tank and wallet. But even for a person like me, the Mercedes Benz World in Stuttgart is worth visiting. If you are a car person, it might even be more exciting, even if you are not a fan of Mercedes.

The multi-story exhibition takes you through a time-travel beginning from the top floor with Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and Otto Friedrich Benz building their first engines and developing the first thing that remotely resembles a car.

As you continue downwards, you can follow the journey of two companies — Benz & Cie. and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft — becoming one and eventually turning into one of the world’s biggest and most successful car companies.

View from outside

While there is certainly a lot to read about the company walking down floor after floor, there is even more to see. On every floor there are numerous cars, bikes, buses and heavy machinery ranging from the first motorbike to a large Mercedes-Benz tour bus to the pope mobile. In addition to the regular, historic exhibition there are special exhibitions on every second floor. Among others, one is dedicated to Daimler’s racing section and another one is dedicated to it’s long time partner and neighbor, the VfB Stuttgart.

If walking through the museum convinced you so much to switch to a Mercedes, you can go to the ground floor and buy one right there. There is a huge used car dealership right in the museum selling everything from your standard Mercedes-A-Class with a few kilometers on it up to a carefully restored old-timer with incredible value. If you have the cash, you can go crazy.

Since Stuttgart is basically a huge Daimler manufacturing plant with a bit of government buildings and the Porsche headquarters breaking the monotony, visiting the Mercedes Benz World is definitely one of the most important sights in Stuttgart. If you go there during September, you can combine it with a visit to the Cannstatter Volksfest, also known as “Wasn”. Some say it is even better than the “Wiesn” in Munich