Cars are the focus of one wing of Berlin’s German Technical Museum, but it was a different experience for me than many other auto exhibits I’ve visited. Aside from including primarily European cars, it’s also arranged not to show off masses of beautiful cars, but to show trends in automobile history.
Not that there aren’t beautiful cars, such as this elegant Benz built for the Imperial German Ambassador to Britain. It outlasted the ambassador and the German Empire, and didn’t return to Germany until 1981.
Two more beauties from the age of arrogant? elegant? luxury. The 1930 NAG-Protos in white was found in shambles in a barn; the museum bought it at auction and restored it. The deep blue Nurburg 460 from 1929 was a Daimler-Benz product, designed by Ferdinand Porsche, then its construction director.
But let’s step away from elegant for a moment, and begin with the early days: the 1880s. Just over from the Ambassador’s car is a vehicle a lot less elegant: a typical Berlin cab from just before age of the automobile. You can see it in the title image.
While the horse-drawn cab was still plying the streets, it was joined by a variety of early attempts at motor transport, including this 1885 ‘bone rattler’ that was built by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach (names sound familiar?) Its ride, with Daimler’s 18-year-old son as the driver, claims fame as the first gasoline-powerred vehicle to hit the road.
The next year, a more practical vehicle hit the road, this one patented by another well-known name, Carl Benz. Benz patented it, including its very compact engine, small enough to be hidden under the seat. Its claim is to be the first truly practical automobile. Below it, some of the paraphernalia of the early motorist riding about in open cars.
By the time Georg Klingenberg built this car in 1901, car bodies had begun to be a bit different from wagon bodies. This one was seized as war booty in 1945 and spent years on display at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum; in 1993, it was traded back to Berlin in exchange for other exhibits. Below it, another notable model, the first (1899) model built by the French company De Dion-Bouton, at one time the largest car manufacturer in the world. But only for a short while!
A side exhibit explains the technology of different types of tires and tire surfaces, although the kids in the picture seemed much more interested in spinning the wheels than reading the labels. An older group was paying more attention to the engine model display.
Once cars appeared in greater numbers, their manufacturers looked for ways to present their cars as superior—more beautiful, more economical, more luxurious, and especially, faster. Auto racing grew rapidly in popularity, with many racers sponsored by factories. This car from NAG was a pioneer in many races; a NAG was the first place winner in the first 24-hour Monza race in 1924.
But the luxurious and the fast were not the only market for cars, even in the beginning. The museum interestingly groups together three of the world’s classic low-price cars, including the Ford Model T is calls the first ‘Folks Wagon.’ Until the VW Beetle passed it in 1972, it held the record for most cars sold. The one below has a history of its own: A Russian traffic engineer who migrated to Berlin in 1979 bought it in 1991 from an owner in Chicago.
Its two companions, of course, are the Beetle itself and the French Citroen 2CV, both superstars of the postwar era, and still fun to see and drive today. Note the accompanying ‘mini-me’ models in the display!
Time for another dip into the world of elegant, with the postwar designs coming from Italian designers, from Jaguar and from Porsche.
OK, that’s enough time drooling over those impossibly beautiful machines. Time to return to the unusual and instructional! For a start, the 1922 Grade-Wagen, built by a man trained in aircraft design (it shows!) and for a time the best-selling small car in Germany. Not as big a seller was the single-seat Elektro-Wagen below it, although several thousand saw service as rickshaws.
ProfessorAbe, GeorgeG and PortMoresby all identified it in our weekly One-Clue Mystery.
Not really a car: This is actually a wind-tunnel-designed motorcycle built to test the characteristics of the company’s engines and bikes. In one day on the Monza track it set records for five different classes of motorcycles.
A postwar streamlined classic: Saab’s Model 92, built in a factory that formerly built Saab aircraft. It has a drag coefficient of .3, which compares favorably to today’s Porsches and BMWs. All of the first year’s production was the same color, a green that had been used to paint planes and was now surplus.
Not as luxurious as an Airstream (and with no indoor plumbing) this was a typical German car camper of the late 1930s and postwar era. Some called it a ‘wandering kidney.’
And some less elegant but important vehicles: This stock model Trabant, tricked up in traffic colors, had three private owners before it was purchased by East Berlin’s Road Maintenance division. It spent a number of years on the road, constantly checking traffic and road conditions. Below it, a Gudbrod Atlas 800, a barebones tradesman’s truck. The museum got its example when police who found it abandoned at Tegel Airport couldn’t identify an owner.
Another attempt at a truly economical car: the motorcyle maker Zundapp also produced this car, appropriately called Janus. Front and rear are mirror images, much like today’s Citroen Ami. Below it, a Maico vehicle that aimed at a spot somewhere between an enclosed motorcycle and a basic car.
Two popular models of full-size cars from the 1980s show influences of American design, including slight attempts at tail-fins. Each had its own audience: while the Opel Kapitan was aimed at mid-level managers and businessmen, the biggest audience for the Mercedes 180 and 190 was taxi companies. They loved its big trunk and its thrifty and seemingly unbreakable diesel engine.
And a moment for a pair of good ideas that didn’t pan out, although they still have their fans. The Amphicar can still be seen occasionally, but the company failed after building fewer than 4,000, each of which was dunk-tested to check for leaks. Below it, the NSU Ro 80, sensation of the 1967 automobile shows and featuring the revolutionary Wankel rotary engine. The unreliability of the engine’s oil seals doomed the model and the company.
And now, back to the beginning and the future, sort of. The Hansa-Lloyd Elektro-Schlepper (yes, that’s the name) was a popular electric model for factory and warehouse work. This one hauled trailers full of dry ice around a Bremerhaven ice works for nearly 80 years.
And a last star for today’s show: a hybrid Fiat 500. Move over Prius and all the rest! In 1968, engineers and students at Berlin’s Technical University turned this standard 1962 model into the world’s first gas-electric hybrid vehicle.
For more about other portions of the German Technical Museum, click HERE.
