Benz Faqs

On May 19, 2006, the brand new Mercedes-Benz Museum opens its doors to the public. The extraordinary new building is far more than a home to 120 years of automotive history: the Mercedes-Benz Museum is under obligation to the customers, employees and public, because what is exhibited there will move them literally.

The new Mercedes-Benz Museum was created the way a new car series would be. First it was conceived and rough-sketched in the mind and with computer assistance. The participants entered unknown territory with the concept. Prototypes of the structure were designed, some even full-scale, to test the feasibility of ideas. As everything gradually neared completion, an intensive test run was conducted to put the entire museum to the acid test.

Now the “new series” is ready, and its uniqueness suggests just one comparison: the new Mercedes-Benz Museum is the S-Class among the museums of the world. It stands for the brand and its values. It spreads them abroad. It leads the way. Like the S-Class of Mercedes-Benz.

The new museum is located right next to the parent plant in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim, one of the cradles of the automotive industry. Nor far from here, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach developed their high-speed gasoline engine, the basis for individual mobility. Beginning in 1903, early Mercedes vehicles were created here; this was the site of headquarters following the merger of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft with Benz & Cie. to form Daimler-Benz AG in 1926. Here was the starting point of reconstruction after World War II; and, here the Mercedes-Benz brand still is at home today.

The new Mercedes-Benz Museum thus holds out its hand to all employees who worked for the brand in the past, work for it now, or will work for it in future. It gives them a promise of continuity. One hundred and twenty years of automotive history constantly point forward too, the basis for this being the permanent innovative spirit of the Mercedes-Benz brand innovations are the milestones on the way to the future.

The Mercedes-Benz Museum itself already has made history. From its origins as a collection of technical objects for Benz and Daimler in the late 19th century to the first “proper” museum, opened in 1936; from the reconstruction in 1961 to the comprehensive redesign of the exhibition for the “100 Years of the Automobile” anniversary in 1986: always it has been a mirror of the brand into which customers, employees and the public could take a deep look. The new Museum carries on this tradition.