Driving an old Classic Alfa Spider on the motorway isn’t all that great. We prefer little winding country roads.
BHPian Jeroen recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
My best friend and spanner mate Peter and I returned from our annual Spider trip a couple of weeks ago. Over the years we have done endless of these trips.
We reserve the time in our agenda usually at least 6 months ahead. We aim for the end of August – mid-September. This means the school holidays are over in Western Europe and the weather might still be pleasant.
Last year we went to Scotland (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/trave…gine-room.html)
You can find several of our other travelogues on the forum, from the North Pole to Italy and anything in between.
We never make a detailed plan on where to go and what to see. Usually, we have a rough idea of what area we want to drive. Sometimes we combine it with a specific (car) event we want to attend. E.g twice in all these years we combined our Spider drive with the Beaulieu Autojumble/car parts.
This year we decided we wanted to visit the Technic Museum in Sinnsheim. Peter had never been there. For me, it was at least 20 years ago.
We have some very good threads on the Technic Museum in Sinnsheim and its sister nearbyTechnik Museum in Speyer. We checked the two websites. By and large, everybody seems to agree that the town of Speyer is much nicer than Sinnsheim. But the Technik Museum at Sinnsheim has a larger collection.
Sinnsheim is a little to the northwest of Stuttgart. So that would also bring us near the south of Germany and the gorgeous “Swartzwald”.
Twenty years ago, I did both of these museums in one day. But we wanted to spend the morning driving to Sinnsheim (500km), spend the afternoon visiting the museum and move on the next day. We booked a small hotel in Sinnsheim for our first night on the road. We usually don’t book hotels ahead. But this time we knew we would be in Sinnsheim at the end of a very long day. Might as well stay there.
Peter lives about an hour and forty-minute drive north of us. So he arrived at our home the night before so we can set off early the next day
Both Spiders ready to rock!!!
We had breakfast the next morning. Tradition has it we plan the morning leg of our route during breakfasts. So we bring maps, iPads, iPhones and our TomToms. It was a simple plan. Hit the motorway 3 km south of our home, after 500 km of motorway driving, leave the motorway, drive 3km and park a the Technik museum.
Driving an old Classic Alfa Spider on the motorway isn’t all that great. We prefer little winding country roads. But to get to some new sights and great driving regions you need to put in the miles. Some of the stretches were ok scenic and view-wise.
We cruise, top down always, at approx 105-110 km/h. Which means the engines are running around 3200-3300 RPM. Easy going.
We usually stop for coffee and a bite to eat every 1,5-2 hours or whenever we feel like stopping. When we are out on our road trips, there is no such thing as a diet sheet, anywhere!
The Technik Museum in Sinnsheim is known for many of its exhibits. But it is probably best known for these two iconic planes. As they are on display on top of the roof of the museum you can see them from afar; The Concorde and the Concorski (The Russian TU144)
We climbed to the cockpits of both these machines. Very different. Somehow the Concorde feels much more complex and high-tech than the Tupolev.
Flight engineer workstation
I am an avid aviation enthusiast, very frequent flyer and pilot myself. I have flown as a passenger on Concorde and had the pleasure of piloting its original Flight Simulator used to train the British Airways crew!
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/comme…simulator.html
As we have several excellent threads on this museum I did not take any other images. If you are near this museum, or the one in Speyer, I can recommend visiting it. It is an amazing collection of planes, trains, locomotives, cars, trucks, tanks and so on!
https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/
It recently acquired a German submarine. It was transported on a barge from the Netherlands into Germany where it made the last few miles on the road. It is on display in front of the museum, but unfortunately, they were still working on it and you could not enter it.
I always meticulously wash, polish, wax, vacuum and clean my Spider for all my trips. Peter is a little less concerned. However, even he had to admit his Spider looked terrible and decided to wash it down at he DIY car wash next to the museum before we drove to our hotel.
Our hotel was only a five-minute drive from the museum. It had a private underground, free, parking garage. Perfect for our Spiders. We checked in and went to explore Sinnsheim. Not too much exploring because it is a very small town.
We sat down to have a drink whilst figuring out where to have dinner. We have another tradition. On our first night in Germany, we always google “best schnitzel in ………” . We love Schnitzels. Even though it is an Austrian dish, the Germans do very good Schnitzels. As luck would have it, google told us the place we were sitting also had the best Schnitzles. So we ordered some Schnitzles with some more alcohol-free beers.
The next morning at breakfast, Peter suggested we might want to visit the Mercedes Benz Museum. We were not that far from Stuttgart. Peter and I visited it, many years ago. Also, on one of our annual Spider trips. At the time we parked our two Spiders into the museum forecourt.
One is not supposed to drive an Alfa Spider into the MB museum forecourt. No car, no matter the brand is supposed to be parked there! But we had our iconic image, despite ze Germans not being amused.
This time we behaved impeccably and parked in the parking garages!
Again, we have several excellent threads on the Mercedes museum. So just one image. The Mercedes Simplex 40PS. The oldest Mercedes still in existence. Designed by Maybch and produced in 1902!!
This museum, as far as I am concerned holds three different attractions. There is an outstanding collection of Mercedes cars, duh! The building is a work of art. The third is part of the exhibition. You start at the top floor and work your way down. Along the walls, as you make your way down from floor to floor, they have put up a timeline made of images. So as you walk from the very old MBs (later 1800/early 1900s) to about 1980s. the images show major events of the various times. From the moon landing to the concentration camps in WW2. Makes for very interesting reading!
We had a quick bite to eat at the museum, jumped into a Spiders and started heading South to the Schwartz wald. We put together an attractive route. Tom Tom on its website allows you to plan a route with various degrees of bends, corners and hills. We always set our TomToms to; No Motorway, thrills, maximum number of corns and maximum altitude variation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3COD5h62GMk
People who see our Spiders for the first time always comment on how small they are. Yes, they are indeed. Chair for reference!
Stopping on the way for some coffee and refreshments. I swear, German small towns and villages are the neatest!!
As always, our trips are first and foremost about driving our Spiders and enjoying our friendship. We drive all day unless we see something that might interest us. As we drove through the small town of Schramberg I spotted the Auto- and Uhrenwelt museum. That sounds like it could be of interest to us, so we pulled over.
https://auto-und-uhrenwelt.de/de/
It was not just one museum, it was four separate museums. The said auto and clock museum, a diesel engine museum, a model railroad engine and another car museum.
Just a couple of images from the auto and clock museum.
Showcasing an upside-down (accident) VW Beetle
How about this Ford 12M with its famous Weltkugel (Globe)
This museum has four floors, and lots of interesting cars on display. Don’t expect Ferrari’s or Lambo’s. These are mostly ordinary middle-of-the-road (pardon the pun) cars. But those are the ones we like most!
Of course, lots of clocks and watches on display as well. This town houses the Junghaus factory. Nice watches.
Across the road was the diesel museum. We were given the key to the museum door. It is very small and you let yourself in! It is an old power generator. (Peter for scale!)
Cylinder lubrication pump.
Rockers and camshaft
Very small, but nice to see. When we were done, we turned off the lights, locked up and went next door to the rail model museum. Lots to see. They have several large tracks. Most of the rolling stock is all handmade on a pretty large scale! I took some images of the displays which I thought were really amazing.
In the end, we decided not to visit the fourth museum. It was a very nice classic car museum. Private collection. We had a quick peek inside. It all looked very nice and neat and well displayed. But these sorts of museums rarely hold something unique. We decided we wanted to get some more miles across the Schwartzwald.
Stopping for some scenic shots!
Continue reading BHPian Jeroen’s post for more insights and information.
