Automuseum Volkswagen

Description

At the AutoMuseum Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, the history of the Volkswagen brand is presented across approximately 5,000 m²: the permanent exhibition comprises around 140 vehicles from various years of manufacture, complemented by roughly 20 exhibits in rotating special exhibitions.

The museum is located in the Heßlingen district, Gewerbegebiet Ost, at Dieselstraße 35, near the city centre. It is housed in a factory building erected in 1966 that formerly operated as a textile works. Since 1992 the institution has been run by the Stiftung AutoMuseum Volkswagen; the museum was initiated and is supported by Volkswagen AG.

The collection has its origins in company-internal holdings from 1954; as early as 1967 a vehicle collection was established on the factory site, initially not open to the public. On 25 April 1985 the museum opened at its present location as AutoMuseum Wolfsburg. At first, exhibits from several marques of the then Volkswagen Group were on display, before the holdings were transferred to the newly founded foundation on 1 January 1992. A comprehensive redesign took place in 2001 with a focus on vehicles of the Volkswagen brand; parts of the earlier collection were moved to the ZeitHaus in the Autostadt. Further curation work followed, most recently the establishment of the Motoren-Kabinett, which opened on 8 November 2017.

Thematically, the exhibition documents, for example, the development of the VW Beetle from the 1930s up to the end of production in Mexico in 2003. On display are racing cars, prototypes, design studies, one-off vehicles and vehicles for special purposes such as postal service, police or fire departments. The Motoren-Kabinett presents around 50 engines and transmissions and is accessible as part of guided tours by prior arrangement. The exhibition is organised into five thematic islands: Kumpel Käfer, Generation Golf, Familie Volkswagen, Volkswagen-Transporter – von Nutzen bis Luxus, and Futurum Volkswagen.

Among the outstanding exhibits, in the air-cooled models are early KdF/Beetle examples from the 1940s and 1950s, variants known from films and production models up to the last Beetle built in Germany, early Transporter models and all-wheel-drive versions. Among the water-cooled vehicles are early Golf and Polo models, production and special editions as well as prototypes and later studies. The collection is rounded out by distinctive racing and record-setting cars from various decades.