Plant Tour

Okay, it's a plant tour of BMW, not anything to do with plants. But the BMW Museum is such an awesome museum, I wanted to share. Oh, and we actually didn't go on the plant tour, it was closed. It was August and BMW factory is shut down for two weeks.

We were in Munich few weeks ago and stopped in to see the museum. I'm no motor head. I can change a battery and a tire and refill oil and windshield wiper fluid. That's the extent of my car knowledge. But I do like design, and BMW has no shortage of design cred, from the origins of the company through to this thoroughly modern museum, a cathedral to the car.

After spending a couple hours visiting the Museum, we walked next door to the 1972 Olympic Village, which is still exists and is a community in and of itself. It actually has its own mayor, many neighborhoods have grown around the site over the years as Munich grew. The grounds are used as a public park, with great athletic venues, from a huge stadium to gymnasiums to a natatorium and plenty of ares for outside activities, including ponds, lakes and rivers.

Motorcycles stacked like matchbox toys.

The phallus-shaped chassis supports all those jokes about men and their cars.

Race car on a wall.

Car badges suspended and hung by year. There were great displays throughout the entire museum.

The advertising room. Ads and posters would roll up into the wall. room lights would dim, TVs were revealed behind the ads. Being an ad guy, I liked this room.

Top Floor: Concept - floating choreographed hanging balls created the shapes of different cars over the years.
The glass below it revealed the clay car in the next photo.

Below the floating balls is a car in "design mode" made of clay.
The finished project is on the floor below, seen through the glass floor.

And teh floor below has this 1971 BMW CSi. Sexy? No?

Interactive touch sensitive tables had the entire history of the company, including video.

The graphics projected onto the walls moved. Sometimes with abstract graphics, sometimes with shadowy images of cars.

1955 Isetta. The front of this three-wheeled car IS the door.

benches folded down from the walls and when you sat down, an audio story was directed at you completing the story of the photos above the bench. Good way to have visitors rest AND still sell them on the cars.

The exit from the Museum - sort of Guggenheim-lik

The factory entrance.

Pinky Tuscadero got to try out BMW bikes for fit and style. No pink ones though.

The factory building entrance.

BMW corporate office on the right. They say it's the world's only four-cylinder building.