Pt 6: The Wolfsburg Museum, or the only German museum not full of tears...

That's not true, but certainly it can be said that Berlin has had a rough history in the last 80 years or so...

But Wolfsburg housed the museum for VWs. We were rushing through the Autostadt not realizing that the VW museum was very small and also preparing for a special event and had reduced its display accordingly. Which is why this is all I got to see of the Beetle RSI-


Being so close to the factory, there where a lot of the 'signed' editions cars, mostly Beetles, like this one signed by all the people involved in the design-

My obvious favorite, of course, is El Gato. I imagine him as some sort of design super hero who shows in a cape and a Zorro hat at just the right time, saying, "No no, the solution is to put the plate molding on top of the bumper thus granting proper clearances for the exhaust!" and then vanishes while a swooning intern asks, "Who was that masked engineer?"

And this Rabbit that had everyone who worked at Volkswagen at the time on it-


Also on hand was a collection of Beetles made out of different things, including wood. This was my favorite-had a sort of Fantasy Island vibe to it-

as did this one-

Among the cars that were also boats was Bug that was also a gondola-

And of course the friendliest emergency vehicles ever-




That yellow one is Germany's AAA.

The best part, however, was the unbelievably inexpensive swag store. The most expensive thing I bought was a two Euro Bubblehead pin, and that included the 'Memory' card game for .55 Euros and the canvas Wolfsburg bag for .30 Euros. And we had time to return to the Autostadt where I picked up a split window bus t-shirt as well as a perfect replica of my old 914 right down to the aftermarket Fucha wheels. Also for about half the price I'd pay for the same model at a race. Plus, I got to feed my obsession with the power factory that powers both the plant and the city of Wolfsburg-

That's the Zeithaus to the left there.

It was a pretty good little VWgasm. And the Scirocco looks pretty damn cool, even if just a bulgy Rabbit.

More depressing museums with relatively random photography policies to follow.