Stuttgart is home to two automotive legends – Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. Both have museums there. The two companies worked closely together in 1991-1994 to produce the Mercedes 500E, the super sports sedan of its era. It was based on a Mercedes E-class designed for a smaller straight-six engine.
Mercedes didn’t have a V8 small enough to fit in the engine bay so they hired Porsche to do it. Mercedes would make the chassis of the car, send it over to Porsche to put the engine in it, then truck it back to Mercedes for final assembly.
I visited the Mercedes-Benz Museum just months after my Arctic road trip in a Mercedes with Seth, so it felt sort of like meeting my hero. The museum is shaped like a spiral so you start at the top and slowly work your way down in one continuous exhibition hall with nearly 200 vehicles on display.
The museum is located on the factory grounds. It wasn’t just old cars and race cars either, there were trucks, trailers, and one of the first double-decker buses in the world. I highly recommend getting the multilingual audio guide to interpret your way through some of the most iconic cars of the past century, such as the 1956 300SL.
If I were to own a Mercedes, I’d look for the 190E 2.3 16. What a legend.
