Not all the art in museums, of course, is painting and sculpture. Good design has earned recognition as serious art, especially in the last hundred years, so it was a pleasant, but not very big, surprise to find a wonderful collection of wonderful cars and motorcycles lurking on the lower level of Munich’s main contemporary art museum, the Pinakothek der Moderne.
Actually, what first drew my attention was a group of people sitting at the bottom of a broad staircase, staring at a collection of objects in a lighted display case. The cars were barely visible. To be even more honest, my first glance went to the seats they were on, oddly curved (but surprisingly comfortable) plastic pods. As a One-Clue Mystery, only George G was able to identify their location.
The Pinakothek der Moderne is the youngest in every way of Munich’s big three of art museums. The Alte Pinakothek, dating to 1826 and the painting collection of Bavarian King Ludwig I, is one of the oldest public art museums in the world. Its neighbor, the Neue Pinakothek, shows works of the 19th century, and the Moderne, opened less than 20 years ago, focuses on the 20th and 21st. Its building, however, has been criticized as not a good example of modern art. Sadly, this is the better-looking side!
Meanwhile, downstairs, the exhibit is organized around the Audi design wall, which is in the title picture, above. The wall was created as part of the debut of the Sport Quattro concept coupe, a 700-horsepower hardtop. The model in the title photo is a full-size mock-up, and rests on over 1,800 perfectly proportioned die-cast miniature models of the car.
But the exhibit is not limited to Audi. It has a variety of different styles and makes, all of them featuring sleek looks that say ‘motion’ and ‘speed.’
They range from a variety of small cars with the flowing shape familiar to all of us from the VW Bug and Chrysler Airflow concepts to a long, sleek Tatra prototype from the Czech Republic.
The Tatra 87 was introduced in 1937, and then produced again from 1950 to 1953. It was, for its time, amazingly fuel-efficient due to its sleek lines and finned tail.
The Tatra’s sleek looks in a large car have an echo in the later, and much more familiar, Citroen DS series, beloved of French presidents, film stars and bank robbers. Though some accuse it of putting form before function, it pioneered a number of important technologies, including continuously-adjustable suspensions.
Aside from the air suspension, it was also the first car to be equipped with disc brakes. Its super-sleek looks are down to Flaminio Bertoni, an Italian sculptor who worked with the French company. Seldom-seen variants were built as station wagons and ambulances.
Here are three smaller cars in the collection, all sharing enough of a body shape to almost be twins ‘separated at birth,’ a profile also shared by Chrysler’s 1934 Airflow series. The Volkswagen design, by Ferdinand Porsche, was so similar to Tatra’s small 97 model that Porsche lost a lawsuit over it.
The next two share not only many similarities, but a designer, Karl Jenschke. First is the Adler Type 10, also called the Autobahn Adler, since it arrived at about the same time. Despite its size, it was a luxury model, and only about 5,000 were built during its three-year run.
Before the Adler, Jenschke had been the designer for Steyr-Daimler-Puch, an Austrian company for which he designed a number of cars, including the Steyr 50 and the slightly-larger and more powerful Steyr 55, often referred to as the Baby. It had an air-cooled engine and had a number of weight-saving innovations including using the starter shaft also as the radiator fan shaft. It was sometimes referred to as the ‘Austrian Volkswagen,’ although it’s clearly prettier.
Then we turn to a more recent machine, the NSU Ro 80, from 1967-77, whose sleek lines are less significant than what is under the hood: the first Wankel rotary engine to power a production car. Sadly, it was not a very reliable engine, and by the time the problems were solved around 1970, the costs had weakened NSU. VW bought it and merged it with Auto Union to form Audi.
Last but not least of the cars on display, the familiar Porsche 911, from the hand that drew the Volkswagen. Introduced in 1962, the example here is an SC from 1986.
Rounding out the collection are a large group of motorcycles from various makers and in various styles, starting from the 1920s. First up, a 1920 Mars, from Germany, and designed by Claus Franzenberg, and then a super-lean1948 Imme R 100, designed by Norbert Riedel.
You won’t find the next one on the road: It’s a design study from 1978 by Luigi Colani, intended to study air flow and influence future design.
Not quite a bicycle built for two, but two-seaters nonetheless.
And a pair of unusual arrangements of seat, engine and wheels.
It seemed almost a shame, when we left the museum, to be limited to …ahem… pedestrian forms of transportation!
