Day eleven – Konstanz to Stuttgart
| Distance today – 199 km | Journey time – 2h 45m |
| Total trip distance – 2,980 km | Total journey time – 2d 00h 05m |
The plan for day eleven was hatched on April 1st at 8:10am. I was online at 8am when tickets for the Porsche museum for the 3 months commencing 1st October became available for purchase, and secured them 10 minutes later. Our 1 hour tour slot was at 3:30pm, to give us plenty of time to travel from Konstanz to Stuttgart, which in hindsight was the perfect time.
We woke up to blue skies and no wind, so the postponed run from the day before happened – a run along the lakeside past a wide variety of hotels and houses, through a forest and into a small park – and back. The lake wasn’t particularly deep by the shoreline, and the water crystal clear.
We returned to the hotel for a shower, and finally saw the view from our room with skies clear of rain. Not an unobscured view of the lake, but you could see the lake well enough from our private balcony. Breakfast was a near repeat of the day before, this time we ordered a waffle-bacon-egg sandwich and an omelette. Both excellent. Coffee still poor, but Jo’s vanilla Roibos tea was apparently very good. Jo also collected some sweets for the journey.
From Konstanz it was motorway nearly the whole way, and more exciting was that sections were unrestricted Autobahn. Unsure of when the speed limit was removed, Jo used Google to find the signs we should be looking for (5 diagonal black lines through the speed limit for the section you have just exited). When we thought we were good to go, we used other cars as indicators to signal the push to V-max (well, not V-max as that would kill our winter tyres which were labelled as being limited to just over 140mph).
The road was 2 lanes wide with numerous lorries and slower cars, so we were careful to use longer, straighter sections to build up speed. Past lorries I slowed so as to avoid being sucked sidewards, and if cars looked like they were coming up behind slower traffic I eased off until I knew how close they were (things come up pretty quick at >100mph. In the end we had a few attempts at faster runs and hit 210km/h – that’s just over 130mph. Having been that speed, settling at 100mph felt quite comfortable. The Macan was coping well and was still accelerating at 210km/h, but of course a car of that design isn’t really shaped to go much faster, nor did I want to push the winter tyres too hard. We’ll just need to return with something faster!
Once in Stuttgart (an unremarkable city, quite industrial) we found the Porsche museum and its underground car park. We had a couple of hours before our tour so decided to check-in for the tour (we got our Porsche lanyards and tour badges) and visit the museum. It’s full of Porsches, or cars Porsche have worked on, but mostly Porsches from the earliest to current models, including a good number of race cars. I really enjoyed it as there was so much to look at. Jo, less so, though she did seem to enjoy the blue Porsche from the movie Cars (yes, the girl car with the eyes for headlamps) a little too much when there were so many other important or incredible cars around.
Rather than spam the page with car photos, here are my favourites then the usual gallery for those who care (make sure you click on the first gallery image and scroll through though!!)
Once finished in the museum we enjoyed some Porsche soup and something to drink, spoke to a German who’d visited the UK extensively and kept wanging on about Brexit despite me starting the conversation suggesting we didn’t care any more, then excused ourselves for the factory tour.
No photos here (very sadly) as all phones and cameras are strictly banned. However, we saw the 911 production line, from the point at which the painted bodyshell enters the assembly line to the final stage where the finished car is inspected. We missed the engine and transmission assembly out as the public aren’t allowed in that area, but otherwise saw the whole process.
Once the painted bodyshell enters assembly it travels through 2 floors and 3 areas of build, moving something like 130 stations where it spends 2 minutes and 40 seconds at each having the next thing done to it. In a single shift they build around 240 cars, and the production line is for ALL variants from the base 911 Carrera to the 911 GT3 RS and Cup cars. The build is mostly done by hand, using machinery to help lift heavier items (dashboard, front glass, etc.) Pretty impressive. Jo gave it a 9/10 for interest. I loved it, and asked the poor tour guide lots of questions.
Once done at Porsche we headed to our hotel, a nice travellers hotel in the middle of a particularly industrial part of Stuttgart only 5 minutes from the Porsche campus, then went out for pizza at Stuttgart’s best pizza place (according to them, I had no reference points to confirm this claim – but the pizza was amazing).
