Baby, You Can Drive My Autostadt

Once upon a time in North America, we lived an uncomplicated love affair with the cars we produced. The old slogan “See the USA in your Chevrolet” recaps those halcyon days. Now automakers are in varying degrees of trouble, partly because their products haven’t inspired us for years. But the passionate engagement between human and car is alive and well in Germany, where declarations of love are enacted each and every day in Volkswagen’s Autostadt. The world’s biggest corporate theme park, this “car city” occupies 62 acres of post-industrial land across an old canal from the massive VW plant in Wolfsburg.

To reach this giant slice of car heaven, I speed down the autobahn in a brand new silver Volkswagen Touran. The special European model has six gears, prompting me to barrel along at 160 kilometres an hour. Only the crazy Audis occasionally blow by me; otherwise I’m feeling very King of the Road.

The Touran and I pull off the highway into Autostadt. We pass the futuristic Audi Pavilion (Audi is one of nine VW brands) and two 60-metre-tall glass silos, each housing 400 shiny VWs arrayed in stacked, perimeter-hugging rows. Motorized metal pallets are taking one car out of a tower and moving another in – a ritual that’s repeated every 40 seconds. At the road’s end, we reach the Ritz-Carlton, purpose-built for Autostadt visitors. Having handily beaten the estimated journey time set by the Touran’s navigational system, I hand my keys to the bellhop and steer my steps to the hotel’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant for roast boar, followed by a swim in a long, narrow pool, plopped down in the middle of the canal.

The following morning, I hike through parts of the enormous factory. It’s so vast that bicycles are used to get around inside; the principality of Monaco could almost fit into its 395 acres. I watch people who’ve descended from all over Germany to pick up their new vehicles – Passats, Golfs, GTIs – in a multistage handover replete with formality and high drama. First the proud owners spot their car in the plant, like checking out their baby in the hospital nursery. Then they watch it making the transit, by robotized pallet, to one of the two glass towers. The robots hoist the car up to an outward-facing slot as if to give it a bird’s-eye view of the immense, road-filled world it’s about to enter. A few hours later, the auto arrives – at last – in the presentation centre. A thirty-something man, with son and father in tow, is about to take possession of a Jetta. He’s thrilled the odometer will read zero, the car being conveyed rather than driven to this point. “It’s 100-percent new, virgin,” he says. His son sums up the clan’s excitement more simply: “Ja, prima.”

A tour guide leads me through the neighbouring museum of automobile history, featuring such milestone cars as the 1886 Benz Patent Motor Vehicle, a 1913 Ford Model-T, John Lennon’s Beetle and an early Golf GTI. He fondly remembers his own GTI, his nostalgia for the car not dimmed by the fact that he crashed it into a tree.

Photo: Kai-uwe Knoth Autostadt

The next day, a renowned German auto journalist-cum-VW executive, Eberhard Kittler, brings me up to speed on Volkswagen’s history over lunch at Chardonnay, one of the nine Mövenpick restaurants at Autostadt. He highlights his favourite models from the brand’s past, enthusing about the amphibious Schwimmwagen (“swim car”). He hopes to have one restored so it can paddle around the canal. (I imagine how weird it would be to see it swim up to the mid-canal pool behind the Ritz.) Stomachs full, we hit a museum devoted to Volkswagens. Here Herbie the Love Bug lives among a legion of gaudily painted microbuses. The recovering journalist reminisces about childhood holidays in a VW camper van with a pop-up roof. But this is also where the company’s dark past comes to light: the building houses the VW prototype owned by Hitler.

And there’s no nostalgia at a former air-raid bunker underneath the factory. It’s been transformed into a memorial to the slave labourers who worked in the VW plant during World War II. Jews brought in from Auschwitz and non-Jewish French and Eastern Europeans from occupied nations lived in concentration-camp conditions nearby. The company’s archivist, Dr. Ulrike Gutzmann, sombrely shows me the wrenching internee letters and photos of the emaciated workers. “It’s important to remember this too,” she says.

I decompress with a coffee overlooking the children’s play area in the VW museum. Tots bop about in tiny pedal cars; if they drive carefully and ably, they’re awarded little mock licences. For adults, there’s a sophisticated driving simulator that shuts down when the driver careens the virtual car about too wildly. Not that I’d know anything about that.

Back at the Ritz, I take another swim in the canal pool. From its warm water, I look through the billowing steam to the factory’s smokestacks and the hotel’s illuminated back wall and up to the nearly full moon transiting the black sky. A surreal end to a surreal journey. 

Reinventing the Wheel

Porsche Museum The recently opened $160-million museum in Stuttgart, Germany, has exhibits on everything from Porsche innovations to the role the iconic car played in Le Mans. Have a bite in one of the restaurants before a stop at the gift shop. Because a mini 997 Carrera S Cabriolet is still a 997 Carrera S Cabriolet.  
porsche.com/uk/aboutporsche/porschemuseum

Mercedes-Benz World Located just outside of London, Mercedes-Benz World is a universe unto itself. Spend the day walking around the museum and tracking the company’s 120-year history or get behind the wheel of a Mercedes and learn driving skills on- or off-track.
mercedes-benz.co.uk

Land Rover Experience Start your visit with a guided factory tour in Solihull, England, where you’ll see how a Land Rover is put together from start to finish. Then pilot one of the newest models (or a classic one, if you’re more old school) around the enormous off-road terrains, including the popular Jungle Track.
landroverexperience.com

Check out more Branded Vacations: Kohler’s Waters Spa and Viking’s branded cooking school.

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