Fahrvergnügen

World headquarters of BMW is right here in Munich, just three subway stops from our house. Who could resist a visit? Not only do they have a museum, but they have BMW Welt (BMW World), no doubt named to evoke the excitement of other commercial utopias: Disney World, Water World, Carpet World...

Our good friend Jürgen, who has strong opinions about the culture of car worship, advised us to avoid the BMW bread and circus. We told him I might do a blog post about it, and suddenly he was encouraging us to go. So the pressure is on.

An aside: I've been limping around on a broken foot. It's a boring story starring my own stupidity. I mention it only because the discomfort--OK, agony--makes me crabby and may well have put BMW at a public relations disadvantage when I Quasimodoed my way into the place Saturday afternoon, intending to report on our visit.

But here goes: from the outside, BMW Welt has the scale and appearance of a tidal wave. Inside, it looks like an airport terminal. The scale of it diminishes you, just like any good advertising does, on its way to convincing you that you'll be a more complete, self-actualized person if you just buy whatever (a BMW, for instance). Second, the airport motif evokes all the novelty, romance, and status associated (in ancient times) with air travel. Imagine the freedom! the adventure! the sexual charge!! of flying along in your own BMW at 150 mph.

I know that sounds like deconstructionist blah dee blah blah--like Dorothy whipping back the curtain in the land of Oz and spoiling the magic. But BMW Welt is a big showroom, stoking dreams and selling cars in textbook fashion (though you can't actually buy the car there and drive it home). All the latest BMW models are on display, and visitors are encouraged to get behind the wheel and fantasize. The young, attractive sales people milling about periodically check their hair in the reflections of so many shiny cars, and exchange sympathetic glances with each other as tire kickers wear their patience with question about, oh, I don't know--ccs and rpms and 2drs v 4 drs.

It is mostly guys doing the tire kicking, as their mostly bored girlfriends and wives stand by. Meanwhile, a team of roving custodians discreetly and efficiently eradicates fingerprints with Windex from the cars, as well as from the myriad display cases and kiosks highlighting the technological advances in aerodynamics and engine design and seat upholstery and carbon fiber manufacturing processes and oh my god I don't know what all else, but really, it helps to have an ax sticking in the arch of your left foot and and out the back of your heel, to keep your torpor at bay.

Cherchez la Frau! This deal is not gonna happen.

BMW owns various brands, and at BMW Welt, each has its special piece of real estate. Husqvarna Motorcycles are hidden upstairs in a far corner of the terminal where they run little risk of despoiling the upscale aura of the place. Mini Coopers sit across the concourse from the BMWs, under night club lighting, and with a display about environmental stewardship that is goofy in its earnestness, as well as its pretense.

Rolls Royce, meanwhile, has its own gated estate at BMW Welt. Just two RR models are on display, and both of them inaccessible to the scruffy masses. One was tended behind a VIP rope by a tall footman in white gloves whose most pressing task, as far as I could tell, was to avoid the temptation to climb into the back seat for a nap. The other car, a Silver Shadow, sat on a rotating floor behind a glass half-wall, with big photographs of beautiful, come-hither women projected onto the surrounding walls. As my knees grew weak a little voice in my head piped up: "Those women don't give the time of day to Honda Fit drivers." And suddenly I understood what a schlemiel I am, for want of a Rolls Royce. 

Feeling good and sorry for myself at that point, I hobbled across the footbridge in the cold, drizzly rain to the BMW museum. The main attraction over there, of course, is the assemblage of vintage cars.

The collection included curiosities like the blue BMW Z3 driven by Bond--James Bond--in Golden Eye. That's a sad come-down for the British car industry, I realize. But I gawked at the shiny metal anyway, and I was like, "Pierce Brosnan touched this? Get out!" 

Alas, such moments of transcendence were fleeting. The BMW museum is ultimately a monument to corporate values and glory, not an institution for the preservation of history, much less the promotion of critical discourse, for crying out loud. Which made it fun, in a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel kind of way. Painted along the walkway that spirals up one section of the museum to its futuristic pinnacle, for instance, is a series of bromides such as "Challenge the Status Quo" and "There Are No Limits to Technological Innovation" and "Power is an Aphrodisiac." (Pop quiz: Which one of those gems is attributable to Henry Kissinger, and was not actually on the BMW museum wall?)

Notable for its absence was any mention (that I saw) of BMW's role in a certain troublesome period of German history. There's a jet engine on display, for instance, that went into production in 1944--for some unspecified customer. The explanatory text boasts that the engine was the basis for jet turbos that later powered passenger planes all over the world, and BMW leaves it at that. Down the hall, the museum displays a military motorcycle, sans any tell-tale insignia, that BMW churned out in 1943 for some unnamed army. Of course, I don't expect BMW to self-flagellate, but the turn of a blind eye struck me as a step down a slippery slope toward, well, denial.

Little did I expect to wind up there. Maybe I'm just being a nit-picking killjoy, which wouldn't surprise me, considering my sore foot and my angst over the whole Rolls Royce thing. I do owe BMW at least some credit for its unintentional display, in one dark corner serving as an open utility closet, of a conveyance that really captured my imagination: 

Hey Jürgen, Alp de Huez next summer? You pedaling, me riding in the back seat with all the gear? Allez!

The last straw. (I finally confiscated his Super Glue)