Visit to Mercedes factory and museum! - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

pentoman · #1 04-15-2009, 06:33 AM

Didn't know where to stick this so stuck it here...
Thought you guys over the pond might want to see my story of a journey to Stuttgart (Mercedes HQ) to see their museum and do a factory tour. Feel free to ask questions!
The text is 190-specific since I have 190s and originally posted it on the UK 190 forum.
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I got a little bored recently, so decided to go somewhere and see something. Mercedes museum was a basic (and rather unimaginative) choice - not the one in Sussex, but the one in Stuttgart, Germany.
When we planned to go the flights were looking too expensive, so my friend insisted on driving. Now, people will tell you Germany is not very far, but I can promise that Stuttgart, in the South West, is. Even German people found it hilarious we drove so far for so short a stay.

With practicality, safety, comfort and economy being a priority, a 190 was not quite the most sensible option. Nor was my friend's 17mpg road rally homologation special although he did try to convince me. No, instead we borrowed what happened to come along - a brand new, just delivered, Astra Sporthatch 1.6 SXi. Okay so you haven't got excited by this, but we both were very happy with the vehicle chosen. It fulfils the requirements and required four full tanks of fuel only for the whole thing. It's going to get an interesting running in...

Day 1
We miss the ferry. Finally on the road in France at 4PM, we expect to make Stuttgart in 6 hours (the AA reckon on 6 hrs 28 mins), and keep at about 80 mph. After approximately 4 hours of driving, well into Belgium, I point out we are less than a third of the way there, and the distance to travel actually dawns on us. When it is night, my friend insists on stopping off at the Nurburgring for the night, as apparently he knows somebody called Eddy with a hotel. I agree it would be appropriate to rest there, though point out the stupidity of going back the way we came to get there. We near the track and the road is soon covered in snow, with the last 8 kms taking half an hour at about 15mph. It would appear the ring is in the mountains and doesn't really operate in the winter - later some Germans will tell us it is illegal to drive there at this time without winter tyres. So we arrive at 10PM and awake Eddy, who has no idea who my friend is, and does not remember ever meeting him! Fortunately he rents us a room anyway. It has very bad adult movies. You can see the track from the window.

There it is! The nurburgring! It's obvious no cars will be running round the track in the snow so we head off first thing. A bunch of other UK registered cars are at the hotel so it's not just us.

Eddy has a 997 GT3 RS...

Day 2

Even with the derestricted autobahn, where we only occasionally go over 100, we hit Stuttgart at 2PM. This leaves half a day to see things. We realise that to make it back in time for our return ferry we will have to leave tomorrow. A 3 day trip has turned into a 1 day trip! We go straight to the Mercedes museum.

The museum car park contains the CLS show/concept car

Walking downstairs to the entrance, the very first thing I see is...

Which you can't complain about.

This area is a showroom including new and used Mercedes (those 190s are used believe it or not).

We enter the museum and it has a lot of nice cars. There's some buses which I find interesting, a garbage truck, a handful of celebrity cars, and even racing trucks. No roadgoing Evo II, or SLR however.

Celebrity cars:

This is ringo starr's AMG - really dodgy bodywork, must have been smashed or something

The popemobile, and people should recognize the one of the left.....

A famous Californian Governor's car!!

This is a taxi from Portugal that did approximately 1.2 million miles

The one in the middle you might recognize.... it managed a constant 155mph for over 10,000 miles.

The second part of the trip will be put up later.

pentoman · #2 04-15-2009, 06:34 AM

Some more pictures of the Evo then lets get cracking

On the evening of day 2 we head for Stuttgart centre to get a decent hotel. We ask in a bar and an English speaker is fetched. He is wearing an AMG T-shirt, which we ask about and it seems he is one of the engine builders who signs his name on a plaque on each engine! What are the chances of meeting one of these guys I wonder. His directions are not very good and so we joke that he probably didn't even work for AMG and just tells everybody that because it was the cool thing in Stuttgart! The hotel we end up at includes a gym which is a nice break from driving. That night we end up in a bar after asking a huge number of people where we might find one. In the one bar we eventually get to we meet Germans who find us amusing. One of them, Felix, has long hair and once drove 12,000 miles to India in a VW hippy bus, getting grief from customs on the way. He is promoting a strike movement, to do with not going to work or something, and sticks up stickers for it as we leave the pub together. The other is couch-surfing at a girl's place. It is the girl who turns and sparks up conversation with us, in German, after her friends go for cigarettes. I am surprised she did not notice we were English during the 15 minutes we were sat on the table next to her. She tries to convince us to stay in Stuttgart at her place and not to go back tomorrow.

Day 3

We have booked a factory tour. Unfortunately noone told us they do not build Mercedes in Stuttgart, only some engines which is a disappointment. The site is still huge and after a presentation showing they sell as many A/B classes as they do E classes, we take a free employee bus out to the workshop where they build the petrol engines for these cars. Photos aren't allowed. The workshop has a strong smell of metal and casting, and is a mix of grimy workshop feel with just about enough tidy organizedness necessary for building 4,000 engines per day. The tour is fairly relaxed and the guide, a Dr. Heinrich Otto, appears to know many of the engine workers and chats to them along the tour. We get a proper honest talk about each aspect and how many errors they find and what systems they use to improve things, and are shown current production stats, errors, and when accidents most recently happened and how they will work to reduce them. Among the interesting facts is the engines are not started up until they are fitted in a car and the key is turned, they are only given a dry run where frictions and sensors are tested. This is the same system BMW use for various noise, fuel and environmental reasons. However a few engines per day are taken off and tested properly. I asked about the allowed power tolerances, it's +5% or -2%.
We saw the very rough alloy heads after casting, and when the steel valve seats are cooled to -160 degrees for inserting. The engine is a single cam two-valve oddly. We also saw driving around the area disguised E class test cars and a diesel hybrid S class.
Dr. Otto is not just a tour guide but once Senior Production Manager, so he knows more than we could ever think to ask about the management side of the production process. I stayed after the tour ended to ask questions. He is perhaps not such a technical chap as he couldn't (or didn't) offer any reason why Mercedes switched so often from one to two cams on their engines. He said the M102 was built in Stuttgart. I couldn't resist asking him about the M102 with 16v head though - I stated that it was engineered along with Cosworth and it's said Cosworth built the first heads but handed over to Mercedes later. He nodded and said yes, and when pushed further about it being for the later 2.3s and 2.5 still just nodded and said yes again. He then just moved right on to how they then started building the the 6 cylinder 24v head at that time without really answering the question properly. I felt he was vaguely shifty about my question, and I was not nasty enough to point out the coscast casting markings on the later heads and have cause to make him uncomfortable.
Common sense brings me to this question - if this factory casts and builds makes 4,000 four cylinder engines per day, would you really bother to prepare it to make only 4,700 2.5 engines? A couple of things are possible - there were areas of work including older or disabled workers who did out-of-normal production work that didn't fit into the usual production line, so they might have done it. Secondly they probably don't sell than many V12 engines either (figures would be nice.. anybody) but still have a dedicated production process for them.

In the afternoon we head for Porsche who also have a new museum. I don't have much to say about it but here's a lot of pics. If you wish to ask your own questions about them please do. Note the odd 911 and 924 design models.

The line up of Turbo cars is good too.

We then leave for a stop off on the way back to England and the car now has some miles on it

I choose Bonn because it's supposed to be nice and it is.

Then in the morning it's onto the road

We miss our ferry, obviously, and when we roll off the steed is looking good and we've done 1,200 miles at 33.6 MPG which is a good figure.

And back to the UK - it's odd to drive on the left, and odd to hear people speaking English as well. Apart from at the ring, the only British car we saw over there was a D reg Capri of all things, in Bonn, plus the British cars in the museum.

So that was the trip, nothing amazing but pretty fun and it was all rather expensive too so don't underestimate that if you plan to do it yourself (£400 all in and that was with a free car that does good MPG, not much drinking, the super cheap ferry, no ring laps, and bartering cheap hotel rooms).

jwhughes3 · #3 04-16-2009, 02:37 AM

Thanks for sharing - when I was living in Germany last year I went several times to the museum in Stuttgart whenever I could convince friends they had to see it

I don't get tired of wandering and talking to the folks there. I was surprised the same way you were about the chassis production not taking place there - I guess it did at one time, but Mercedes just got too big I suppose.

And I don't think it silly at all to take such a long trip - you accomplished your mission and had fun doing it.

Cheers.

John in San Antonio

Pete Geither · #4 04-16-2009, 05:50 AM

Great pics and report,,, thanks !! My brother and I did the trip last May and had a fabulous time. There was an SLR in the museum at that time though.

Texholdem · #5 04-17-2009, 12:04 AM

Thanks, it brings a lot of memories back.

TheDon · #6 04-17-2009, 12:19 AM

I want a 16 valve now...

pawoSD · #7 04-17-2009, 01:44 AM

Awesome! I was there back in 2002 before they built the new museum, my dad managed to get our whole family into a full factory tour. (The one only car purchasers can take now)....that was quite interesting as well. My sister is in Tubingen right now (about 40 minutes from MB headquarters)...she is going to visit the museum at the end of the month. I am pushing for her to take a huge amt of pictures.

Hopefully someday in the not too distant future I can go back there too.

Hirnbeiss · #8 04-17-2009, 06:56 AM

Did they still have the wooden motorcycle? It never was a good seller because of a few features:
Chain desgned to maximize the number of fingers caught in it
Seat with built in ass-burner from the pilot light underneath

deanyel · #9 04-17-2009, 10:33 AM

Very nice, thanks. There's obviously something very wrong with the ferry schedules.

pentoman · #10 04-19-2009, 06:57 PM

The ferry goes every 2 hours but if you miss your one they just let you go on the next one; it's pretty friendly.

@TheDon - the 16v here

This is a 16v Evolution (if you didn't know) - short stroke high revving 2.5 engine, front & rear SLS, wide body etc. Approx 3-4 times more expensive than a normal 16v in like-for-like condition :/
The 190e 2.0 on the right of it? I believe only 47,000 miles and for sale at 11,000 EUR (Maybe $14,000)!!

I didn't see a wooden motorcycle.
I was interested in the stuff about wartime - 50% of daimler workers were forced workers during WWII, making plane engines.

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