A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

[67pete300]

I spent about 5.5 hours at the Sinsheim Auto and Technik Museum in Sinsheim Germany last Sunday. This place is beyond cool. I thought of many of the projects and people I have seen here at CarJunkie TV so in the theme of HotRodLadyCruiser's amazing photo-tour thread the other day, here is my contribution:

Anyone who has driven on the A6 between Heilbronn and Manheim has seen this guy flying alongside the Autobahn:


The cool thing about all their aircraft is that you can go up inside them. I took a picture out the window from the cockpit of this one:



Ok, now for the cars. This Amphicar is the first thing I see at the Kasse getting my ticket:


First car inside the gate: a 1952 Olds Delta 98 convertible! Here you go HotRodLadyCruiser! This was my second favorite car of the whole place.



They had some pretty campy displays, especially with the American cars. The English translations of the plaques with the descriptions were pretty awful and sometimes pretty funny. I'll show you a good one later.


According to the sign, this is the very first V8 Corvette ever. This one. I have to wonder about that...


Ok, motorcycles. Turk and the others who are so into motorcycles would love this place. I normally wouldn't have spent much time with them, but ever since reading all the motorcycle threads here I figured I was obligated to show you guys some of the seemingly thousands of vintage bikes they had in this place. Believe me, I only took pictures of a few. There were many, many more. Here are a few:





This one is a "Wall of Death" Indian. They had two of these, with two guys who would ride these things around inside the "Wall of Death" which was a huge wooden barrell thing. They had pictures of this. It used to be a regular display at the museum.


Self portrait:


Uh, perhaps some ideas for the Gremlin here?

I had to take this second shot just to get the chain steering wheel:


I'm no expert, but I don't think this scoop belongs on this otherwise nice 69:


Apparently a '79 (according to the sign, but the headlights tell me more like 87 or so) Caprice cop car with no drivetrain is museum-worthy here:


They had lots of big caddies and late 50's barges like this nice '58 Impala:


Some vintage American drag cars:





America and apple pie: Marilyn and a Harley


I'm going to do this in several posts so I don't lose it all...

[67pete300]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

This style of motorcycle made me think of Justin and his motorcycle project. Just what the hell is a cafe racer anyway? I have no idea, but in my mind it looks like this:




Pretty sure not like this:


Tons of WWII stuff. It was all presented pretty neutrally, but there were some amusing presentations:

Our boys:


Their boysthese guys were literally pointed right at our boys)


The ultimate driving machine?


This might be the ultimate driving machine. This is a Panther tank. The "best" tank built in WWII. Too late in the war to be effective. The display was really cool. If you put a coin in the slot the treads started rolling, it made cool tank noises (loudly) and you could drive the turret back and forth with a joystick.



Now THIS is a big-block crank (15.3m long and several tons):


Not sure if it came out of this, but it was right next to it (you can see it on the far right for perspective). Same deal with the train, put in a coin and the wheels went round and it made lots of good train noises.


Some of you may have a slightly newer version of this:


Can't miss these colors anywhere. Especially one this big. This sucker was HUGE and weighed 25 tons. They had video of it dropping the blade on helpless little european cars and then driving over them. Right in the parking lot of the museum. Good stuff.


More "good guys." A Russian T-34 and a US Sherman tank


This one had me scratching my head. A German Lockheed F-104 Starfighter? Many of the plaques didn't have an English translation so I couldn't get the story.



According to the plaque, this Panther tank (same as before) was blown up by its own crew to avoid capture. A likely story...


Just a few perspective shots:




A Stuka dive bomber that either burned or sat at the bottom of a lake for a while: (check out the block standing next to it)

[67pete300]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

I personally am not caught up in all the minibike fervor, but apparently the Germans were way back in 1944!



More Cold War iron outside:




This is the business end of a Soviet T-72 tank:


These cross-sections look alot like the stuff we build submarines out of when I'm not in Germany.


Only a place this cool would have a full size aircraft solely as a piece of playground structure. Believe me, I was tempted to shove some of those kids out of the way to try those slides...


Heading up to the roof to see some aircraft:






The Concorde. I was going to skip the line to go inside, but then figured that this was pretty much my one chance to ever set foot in one so I waited.











And the Russian Tupolev 144 copycat version:





The whole time I am at this museum, these guys are going by overhead, one right after another. Looks like fun.

[67pete300]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

Back inside the 2nd of 2 huge warehouse structures for lots more cars. The cars seemed in better shape and the displays nicer in this second building.

There was tons of German stuff on hand, but I have already been to the Mercedes Benz and Porsche museums in Stuttgart so I didn't spend alot of time on it:







And British:







And Italian:

No clue about the asian plate:




Again, I'm no expert, but they had some serious Ferrarris here. Like the one above. And this Enzo (1 of 399 total built).





Ford Powered!

[67pete300]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

Now for some off-the-wall stuff:

They had a micro-car display and all I could think about when I saw this one was LSR. Again, I didn't know a thing about LSR until this forum but now I look at this thing and am thinking about frontal area and airflow off the back.... May not be any room for engine, but will just have to use lots of boost I guess.





Short wheelbase might be a little scary at speed.

They had lots of huge pre-war Rolls and Maybachs:




These don't really get me going too much but this one had a no-kidding wooden boat tail on it:


This one really caught my attention:



Here's the picture you see at the lower left:


If you didn't catch it, that's Hitler and Mussolini. This is not the same car in the picture, but 1 of 72 Mercedes G4's built.


And now my favorite by far. A real CarJunkie car. This guy would be right at home here. Project Brutus:











Project Brutus is a 46 liter (roughly 2800 cubic inch) BMW V12 aircraft engine mounted in a 1908 chain-drive chassis. Some guy did this relatively recently and there was video of him driving the snot out of it. It sounded like an old WWII airplane (go figure) when it started, and sounded like a tank when it drove off with the chains rattling away. The guys had greasy faces and big goggles and gloves just like you would have seen in the 'teens but they were driving this thing at about 60mph. Really cool.

[67pete300]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

Random stuff:

A pretty serious Bug with a complete tilt front end and Porsche engine.



U-boat diesel, circa 1917:


More minibikes!



Tons more motorcycles:

This one looks particularly salty:


Looks familiar:


This one has a Wankel (rotary) engine!


Just stacked up everywhere:


Bring 3 friends on this one:



Racing Stuff:



As far as the eye can see:



And for you LSR guys, a serious piece of history:







I saw the Blue Flame in some magazines recently. I think maybe they shipped it back to the States for a show somewhere? Not sure how it ended up here.

[67pete300]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

That's it. Hope you liked it. You should go next time you are in Germany. There is another sister museum to this one about 50km up the road in Speyer. They have (among other things) a 747 and an entire U boat. Haven't been to that one.

Here are my two favorites again as I was walking out:



Seeing that big Pontiac with the 455 in the recent Reader's Rides special edition makes me think of this big Olds with a twin turbo 455...

But so goes the old saying, "there's no replacement for displacement." How about 46 liters of displacement?

[Scott Liggett]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

You ONLY spent 5 hours there? I think I would've been there all day.

Great photos.

The Panther tank came along early enough to do some damage, but German's could not build enough of them. Our constant bombing kept the numbers down. The Tiger I had too many engine and fuel issues to be reliable and really effective. It's weight also gave it problems in soggy fields. The armor and fire power of the 88 mm was translated to the Panther. American tank crews were terrified of those two tanks. Our Shermans had to use shear numbers to take them out. 4 to 1, three as targets and one to scoot around the rear and hit the Panther point blank in the ass.

As for the F-104 Starfighter. We did sell the Germans some of those. They were built for one purpose. To chase down and shoot down high altitude Russian bombers. Since Germany was in Nato and on the Front line with the USSR, they got a few.

[HotRodLadyCrusr]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

GREAT post! Thanks for taking the time and effort to post. I know how much work is involved and it is much apprecaited. Informative posts with photos and narrative is what is needed to keep a site interesting and worth visiting.

Thanks for sharing

[Fordplay0621]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

I love all the Old War Stuff especially the Planes. Cool Stuff!

[67pete300]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

You ONLY spent 5 hours there? I think I would've been there all day.

I stopped there on the way somewhere so I had to get going again. If I had known, I would have left earlier to have more time.

[Huskinhano]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

Great post! Thanks for being thoughtful in taking the time to post all the pictures and explainations. I was in the one of the Concords in the Intrepid museum in NYC. Man is that sucker tiny inside.

[Monster]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

FABULOUS !!!

Way to go 67pete300! Great photo-posting. Wish I could have visited that museum.

[ImpalaKonrad]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

super cool shots. Glad to have seen them

[DanStokes]

Re: A real CarJunkie Museum, German-style (lots of pics)

Great Job, Pete! I look forward to getting together with you when you get back here.

Best of everything, and thanks for your service
Dan