Hi,

I've been to Autostadt a number of times. Its VW's way of showcasing
its brands, and yes its heavily into the "marketing" aspect. If you
live in Europe, you can arrange to get your VW delivered to Autostadt
and pick it up there. Its interesting to see who is picking up their
cars, the delivery, etc.

As far as the museum, its a small sampling of the total VW
collection. It does focus about 60% on VW, but has some content from
the brands that VW owns. The best part of the museum are the
reproductions of the early beetle prototypes from 35 & 36. Also, the
1,000,000th beetle (produced in August 1955) is there as well as the
Beetle owned by John Lennon (its the white beetle on the cover of the
Abbey Road album).

The better museum is a 10 minute drive from autostadt. In fact,
there's a shuttle that will bring you from autostadt to the museum.
The shuttle is a 1956 beetle that was converted into a trolley tug to
take visitors through the Wolfsburg factory.

There are a half dozen or so T3s in that museums collection as well
as the majority of the VW collection.

Ric

At 04:47 PM 7/26/2007, Tabe Johnson wrote:
>So I'm sure everyone has noticed my recent silence(ha!)
>I'm in Germany right now, a few hours southwest
>of Wolfsburg, so I coerced my family to go to VW's
>Autostadt with me today.  http://www.autostadt.de
>
>I can't recommend the place.
>
>It's marketing, marketing, marketing, and very little
>else.  Plus, I didn't see a single Vanagon (T3) while
>I was there!
>
>One of the buildings is a museum which I found very
>interesting.  VW has old vehicles from all its brands
>there, as well as special exhibits.
>
>The rest of the complex, though, is advertising for
>VW's brands (VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Lamborghini,
>Bentley)  Some of the advertising is OK, some is
>bad (Lamborghini), and some is just plain weird (Skoda).
>
>Just one guy's opinion.  Take it for what it's worth,
>next time you're considering spending your hard-earned
>tourist dollars.
>
>tabe johnson/87 westy