Skip to main content

Take a Tour of the Wolfsburg ZeitHaus

[See image gallery at www.vwvortex.com]

Way back at the beginning of the millennium Volkswagen decided to build the Autostadt. It was to opened on the occasion of the Hanover World’s Fair, and as a result, shares many of the qualities of a world’s fair, except that it deals primarily with VWs.

Autostadt is contained within the Volkswagen Factory grounds in Wolfsburg and has a number pavilions dedicated to Volkswagen AG’s many brands.

Perhaps the most exciting thing in the Autostadt, though, is the ZeitHaus Museum. Six stories of automotive history are contained within the ZeitHaus and the collection is a very good look at the history of the automobile.

ZeitHaus_Architektur_Rack_720x480_Lightbox_quer_20100525_01

While the museum does skew Volkswagen-wise, the collection contains any and (it seems) every car that its curators find meaningful. While I was there, the ZeitHaus was celebrating automotive innovation by showing cars that were connected by those innovations.

There is, for example, a recreation of the Benz Patent Motorwagen, widely considered to be the first ever automobile, was next to the Ford Model T, the first car built on an assembly line.

IMG_20160819_095958117

There was a celebration of luxury, which placed the Bugatti Royale, a Rolls Royce, and Bentley from similar generations next to each other; early turbocharging was celebrated with a Chevrolet Corvair and a Saab 900 Turbo; aerodynamics were represented by the Citroen DS and Audi A2; and composite materials were represented by a C1 Corvette and a Trabant(!).

That’s not to mention the cars that were there mostly for being pretty, like the Lamborghini Miura, the (recreation) Bugatti Atlantic, and the Cadillac Eldorado Biaritz, and the countless other interesting cars representing the history of the car as Volkswagen’s ZeitHaus sees it.

The pictures above hint at the quality and the quantity of the really interesting, beautiful, rare, and fascinating cars that this glass museum houses. The rest of Wolfsburg is great, but the ZeitHaus should be your first priority if you’re ever there.

The post Take a Tour of the Wolfsburg ZeitHaus appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2bjexUr
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Watch: The Story of the Ads that Made VW Big in America

The ads for the original Beetle are almost as famous and well-loved as the Beetle itself. Looking back now it’s easy to forget, though, just how easily things could have wrong. A new short from Dial M Films tracks the history of those early Volkswagen ads that sold America on the people’s car. The story, of course, begins with the visionary agency that made the ads: Doyle Dane Bernach (DDB). As a popular agency for Jewish products, no agency was more aware of the implications of Volkswagen, and no one, it seems, was more skeptical of the brand than DDB. “Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?” from Dial M Films on Vimeo . William Bernbach, though, was adament that the firm take the client, probably as a way of attracting other lucrative automotive clients. Saddled with a client that he didn’t want, art director Helmut Krone says in the film that he originally came up with ads that were all wrong. Krone tried to do what other manufacturers did and was intent on selling the Beetle ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watch: The Stig Drives (nearly) Seven Generations of Golf GTI

With Volkswagen announcing “major” updates to the Golf, it seems an appropriate time to look back on what we’ve had so far. And who better to guide us through the rich history of the most popular European car ever made than Ben Collins, the former Stig? Some say he’s never met a GTI he doesn’t love, and that he can’t grow any of his own facial hair. All we know is … Ben Collins is actually a pretty solid presenter. Working his way through seven generations of the GTI (skipping over the Mk6) Collins tells us a little bit about each one and matches each mark to its corresponding facial hair craze. The Mk1 GTI for instance, is light and quick, but can lose traction under hard acceleration (in heavy rain). Despite that, Collins calls the Mk1 a “pure gem.” The Mk4, meanwhile, is a powerful return to form after the perhaps too sensible Mk3. Collins ends in the only way he could, with the Mk7, which accelerates faster than a Lamborghini Countach and is all kinds of wonderful. Watch, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volkswagen Golf GTE Wins Top Honor at the 2015 Business Techies Awards

Golf GTE wins Green category in the 2015 BusinessCar Fleet Technology awards Judges praised the Golf GTE for its performance, ease of use and economy Golf GTE launched earlier this year with plug-in hybrid technology – priced from £33,755 204 PS performance combined with CO 2  emissions of just 39 g/km Volkswagen has added to its growing list of 2015 automotive industry accolades by winning the Green category in the annual BusinessCar Fleet Technology Awards – the Techies. The prestigious title was awarded to Volkswagen for the Golf GTE, an innovative plug-in hybrid that combines sporty dynamics with exceptional fuel economy and low CO 2  emissions. Now in their seventh year, the Techies are judged by both BusinessCar’s experienced editorial panel with help from TRL’s technology expert. The industry’s only technology-specific awards, the BusinessCar Techies reward the use of technology to make business car fleet operations easier, cheaper, cleaner, safer and more straig...
Post a Comment
Read more