*** New BMW Museum - Colin's report, Part 1 ****

[Colin]

For many years, the BMW tower has been a landmark building, located on the Petuelring in Munich, close by the site of the 1972 Olympics. In recent years, BMW has recognised the power of its brand image in the market, and has added buildings to their site which welcome the visitor, enthusiast and purchaser. The BMW museum is the longest established of these, but was closed some years ago, for a complete rethink. The newly redesigned museum opened to the public this past weekend, and I was lucky enough to have timed my first ever visit to Munich for the very same weekend. Even better, along with the glorious summer weather, I had arranged to meet up with fellow motoring enthusiast, Christian Wimmer, a well known CarSpinner. I have to say that he was just as I expected......... full of enthusiasm for everything we saw (I only hear so many "oh wow" exclamations from fellow forummers!) and proved to be excellent company for the day.

Even before we entered the museum, we came across a mouth-watering array of cars basking in the Bavarian sunshine. Feast your eyes on these:

































The next great discovery was that admission to the museum is completely free of charge. What a bargain, especially, as the contents then entertained and informed us, and kept the cameras busy for many hours! There are three main floors, but the design is carefully constructed so that there are all sorts of separate rooms, walkways and display areas, so we kept finding another treasure, or another room full of delights.What follows is a summary of the exhibits more or less as we came across them, as we started at the entrance level of the museum, and then meandered down to the ground floor.

The first room we discovered had three cars representing the history of the "affordable" BMW. An early E21 3 series was completed with a 1602 and its 1930s antecedent:











It was at this point that we looked down to the ground floor and could see part of what turned out to be a larger display of some of the more special sports roadsters from BMW's history. I'd already seen two Z8s on the streets of the city in the preceding 24 hours, but was delighted to see another example in here. It was one of the cars that had almost continuous throngs of people around it, even though the museum itself was not that busy.



Moving slightly, we could see rather more of this display area, and the feast that were going to get to, some hours later!









As well as the cars, BMW is of course known for its motorcycles, and there were many of these on display. This particular example is of the very first type produced:



The next little hall area concentrated on some of the technology aspects, with a puzzling display item which turned out to be a recreation of the structure of the 1930s 328 streamlined Coupe, and up on the wall behind was this, the bodyshell for a brand new 6 Series:



The back of this room contained one of the most elegant cars of the 1930s - the original 328 Mille Miglia Coupe. Apparently the car was lost for many years, but, as often happens, was rediscovered, recognised for its historical significance, restored and presented for everyone to enjoy.







More motorcycles in the next hall:



This streamlined bike looked a very scary contraption indeed. It had no lights, so was for daytime use only, and despite the light aluminium body, I suspect that stability was a bit of a challenge!





BMW's foray into motorsport featured, unsurprisingly in a number of the displays, too. This Forumla 1 car dates from the first appearance of BMW in the sport in the early 1980s:

[MexicoCityM3]

Thanks for the great report!

[ret]

nice thread 

[cawimmer430]

We were there. 

Now all you need to do is get a DSLR camera and you're set!