The BMW Museum, Munich

I was recently in Munich and was able to spend some time at the BMW Museum.    It is a nice museum and well worth a look, and you can see most of it in about an hour and a half.

They have some nice exhibits, covering the history of their motorbikes, the first car which was actually an Austin 7 under licence, and then a nice selection of their most famous models including some of their rare pre-war cars.

Some of the highlights for me included:

• The 3 Series display showing the lineage of the 3 series from the 1600 to the current model.
• The M room, showing the M1, original M3, original M5 and the M635csi compared to a current M3, plus all the engines
• A room that highlights some of their design cues they still use, including a 3.0CSi, an early race car, and some prototypes.
• The different 507 convertible variants.
• The streamlined room, showing an early 320 with a streamlined body

Of the big manufacturer museums in Germany, I’ve now been to the Mercedes Museum (both the old one and the new one), the Porsche Museum (the old one) and now the BMW Museum.

The new Mercedes Museum is probably the pick of the  bunch, but this BMW museum is very well done, just on a smaller scale.   I’ve heard the new Porsche museum is better, but the one I saw was an overpriced gift shop with a handful of Porsche’s parked in it.