On Car Museums

At the start of the 21st century, the business of marketing cars requires more effort than ever before. The highly competitive automobile industry has developed the process of selling into a carefully stage-managed exercise in branding, for which the history of the manufacturer and it's part in the development of the modern car becomes a key component.

In South Germany, the heartland of the German car industry this has been taken to new extremes with the development of vast 'customer experiences' that have morphed, what might traditionally be called a car museum into a new and exaggerated type of building. I visited the three most dramatic examples of this phenomenon, the Porsche Museum and The Mercedes-Benz Museum, both in Stuttgart and BMW World in Munich. It is these three three buildings and their respective manufactures that I will be referring to throughout this text.

Although these places do house a carefully orchestrated collection of objects, they are not museums in a familiar sense. Instead these huge, luxurious display cases are an extreme form of 'experiential' marketing that fuse the history of the twentieth century to a present and future vision of technology put forward by a brand.

 The contents of these 'museums' is largely predictable: old cars, new cars, future cars, race cars, historically important cars, motorbikes, vans, trucks, engines, car paraphernalia, touch-screen information points and CGI projections. What is more surprising however is their scale and the immense quantity of time and money that has gone into constructing these buildings. Whilst car advertising and car shows offer temporary glimpses of the machismo and aggressive expenditure of the automobile industry, when working in concrete and steel it becomes clear just how far they will go. These are not academic archives on the history of a brand, but instead a branding of history, at points almost entirely indistinguishable from car dealerships.

The aim of these museums is ultimately to convert the visitor into a customer and in turn, inspire pride in existing owners. After 50 years of marketing affordable cars, the conventional wisdom - that a first-time buyer will stay with a car brand for life - is starting to unravel in the face of international and online competition. In a climate, where manufactures must do everything they can to maintain an emotional connection with potential and existing consumers, the creation of a super museum is a seemingly natural extension of the extravagant marketing machine beyond the usual hubris of the motor show. 

It also makes sense that these 'customer experiences' can roughly be considered German invention. With the exception of perhaps the United State, cars and car manufacturing are part of German modern identity like no other country. Germany has long been one of the world's top producers of automobiles as well as more traditional car museums and collections than anywhere else in the world, all concentrated within the same region of the country. 

This combination of competitiveness and  proximity, matched with the deep cultural associations of automobile history have lead to astronomical spending by the large German manufacturers. The Porsche Museum, for instance, is estimated to have cost €100m to build and the consequences of this outlay are not invisible. 

A trip to one of these museums may initially be reminiscent of the type of national science museum that can be found in most European capitals but the flawless quality of the finishes, the exuberance of the displays and ubiquity of interactive technology makes them a unique experience somewhere between a palace and a space-ship. As a result of the almost unbelievable effort that has been put into their creation they are strangely overpowering, bordering on absurd. The three I visited shared some very similar attributes:

The three museums I am describing are not identical but in this text I am going to focus on the similarities listed above in attempt to understand this relatively new typology of building. The most obvious is that all three have clearly been designed around the relatively basic metaphor of a 'journey'. As a visitor you are theatrically guided on a tightly controlled route that starts by being transported upwards in an lift or via an escalator, directly to the start of car history, like an old man clearing his throat before telling a parable. 

Taking the visitor to the top of the building first is a subtle trick, not only are you given a glimpse of the showmanship to come, but also forced into taking the path dictated by the designers. From the very beginning the connection between history, the cars on display, the brand and the building are strongly delineated. From this point you descend through the history of the automobile, car by car, decade by decade before finally being led into a startling ecstasy of what the future will hold.

This type of circulation can also be found in large games arcades, which given the shared proliferation of buttons and screens might be considered a first cousin of the car museum. The now sadly defunct Trocadero in London is a great example of circulation used in this way that went even further - it's inviting main entrance was essentially a huge, one-way escalator straight to the largest arcade at the top of the building. However finding the exit three floors below, via oddly placed staircases hidden in endless dark arcades appeared to be deliberately confusing.

It begins with the car as a triumph of German invention at the end of the 19th century, before a detailed story of it's development and the impact of providing freedom of travel, at first for pioneers, then to the everyman. The message is clear, the car has changed the world by overcoming a very real barrier to a deeply connected society; physical distance between people and places. Taken as a whole, the forms and functions of the different ages of the car reflect the changing attitudes of society in enough detail that it is possible to construct a relatively complete montage of twentieth century social history built around the changes in car design. 

In organising these museums in this way, these manufactures lay out a version of the 20th century, as a century of great human achievement intertwined with their own successes, portraying themselves as pivotal engineers of human progress. Considering the role of the automobile and it's related technologies in the centuries politics and wars as well as social and cultural changes, this projection doesn't feel entirely dishonest but the more complex details necessary for an objective history are however omitted.

References to the role of their competitors or any involvement with political history that would misrepresent their current brand philosophy are avoided altogether. In the Mercedes museum World War II is reduced to a back-lit photograph in a solemn corridor as if it were a relevant but minor detail in the scheme of a greater history.

Much importance is placed on competitive motor racing and how the constant striving for victory has contributed to the ceaseless innovations to be fed into each new generation of car. The triumphs of each brands various motor sports teams are highlighted, trophies displayed and footage of great victories loops endlessly. The competition between the brands, at it's fiercest and sharpest when racing, must clearly have played its part in the architecture of these museums - each striving to out do the others in any way they can. 

The focus of the visitor is maintained through use the most awe-inspring presentation techniques available; projections, glowing screens, mounted displayed, kinetic sculptures and undulating waves of LED softness. Every trick in the playbook of interactive art is deployed with the precision and seamlessness that only a vast corporate expenditure can guarantee. A barrage of gimmickry that erases any distinction between education and entertainment, blending the physical presence of the vehicles on display with a dumbfounding digital futurism. These museums gloss over any gaps in the rebranding of history with an overwhelming defeat of the senses. The purpose of these buildings is to imprint upon the visitor the sheer power of just how great a future designed by BMW or Mercedes will be.

This demonstration of technological wizardry is so intense that moving through these spaces is at points only comparable to exploring levels of a computer game. The linear parade through various moments of impact and button-pushing interaction feel wholesale lifted from the mind of a level-designer working from a sequenced script. 

A visitor experience not so much designed but play-tested. Architecturally they are frantic and overwhelming; every wall is slanted, curved or covered in LED's. Massive internal spaces can be viewed from specifically labeled 'Photo Points'. There are never-ending ramps and overhangs supported by complex metal structures. Cars are not just parked but stuck to the walls, dangling on tiny cables from the ceiling or arranged in packs as if in the midst of a race. The palette of building materials is an obvious extension of the vehicles they house.

Metallic grids, acres of curved glass and hushed greys imply that even the buildings have been made possible as a result of the tinkering and ambition of genius automotive engineers. Moving walkways and exposed lifts gives the impression that the museums as a whole are also finely-tuned machines - not just 'hi-tech', but 'hyper-tech'.

These factors combined make a type of experience that is singularly cohesive. Nothing is boring, nothing is wasted and everything is precisely oriented along the leylines of a corporate vision where even the vocabulary of the car museum is pure and consistent. Abstract words, 'innovation', 'elegance' and 'dynamism' - casually slipped into every display text or blown up to architectural proportions and painted across walls turning the building into a 50-metre high sales brochure. 

That the atmosphere should be so rigorously controlled is not surprising, all three of museums are situated amongst the corporate and industrial headquarters of the brand, and inevitably close to an actual dealership. Step out of the flag-ship wonderland and it's celebration of design and manufacturing techniques, right into the end-product, a brand new car, yours to buy today. Hand-built by robots, just for you.

 "...Not Only A Temple"

Of course this type of corporate show-boating isn't anything new, but the sheer scale and permanence of it may be. Perhaps the desire to dramatically celebrate the connection between the car and the history of technology is a reaction; over compensating for a new age where the computer has replaced the vehicle as the preeminent symbol of progress. At the start of the 21st century the value of road networks is slowly being superseded by the importance of data networks, leaving traditional industry and manufacturers without a place at the cutting edge promised by computer programmers and silicon valley. Instead the mature car industry must remind us of their ability to understand how we relate to technology and their ability to assemble sumptuous and magical, physical machines. In their hands 'advanced technologies' can be forged into something visceral and satisfying, seductive automata we can cherish and adopt as part of lives; leather trim as standard.

These brazen museums are to demonstrate the unwavering commitment to design and luxury these companies strive for, presenting the car as the ultimate expression of man exerting control over his environment, in great comfort and style.

Subsequently, the idea of technology is portrayed with unrelenting optimism and reverence, that borders on the religious. Technology is presented as an unquestionable, wholly positive force for society and humanity - perhaps even it's saviour. The issue of climate change for instance, instead of a being a potential cause for reflection, is recast as another great technical challenge, now grand enough to occupy the concerns world's foremost innovators. Just how intentional these religious overtones are is hard to say. Certainly aspects of the spatial design appear to borrow heavily from religious architecture and set amongst cathedral-like internal spaces the endless projections and screens feel like a digital equivalent of stained glass. By relying on corporate dogma instead of the objectivity and academism (that would be found in public institutions of this scale), a visit does not feel educational, but rather an opportunity to solemnly and uncritically pay respect. It is a comparison that the manufactures themselves would likely avoid at all costs, but it is telling that Wolf Prix, head architect of BMW World described the building he helped design in the architectural journal 'a3-bau' as:

A revealing description that exposes a combination of grand ambition and lack of specificity that neatly summarises the nature of these odd places. Multi-purpose corporate motherships, seeking to use grandiose design to turn their companies history into something altogether more spiritual. And yet after visiting these museums his analogy to religion doesn't seem all that far-fetched. In these car museums, as a result of vast expenditure, the manufactures have created experiences that genuinely touch on the sublime. These buildings borrows so much from science fiction and computer games they provide spaces in which it becomes, if only momentarily, impossible to distinguish between reality and digital fantasy. The slightly terrifying outcome, at least within the protected confines of their corporate museums, is that technology, in the hands of car industry, may be as powerful as they want you to believe.