Automuseum Prototyp

In the HafenCity, the PROTOTYP car museum presents rare sports and racing car classics as well as cars with a special story from over 80 years of automotive history.

You rarely get that close to these automotive icons. Without disturbing barriers and partitioning glass walls, the best perspectives on the elegance and aesthetics of past automotive art emerge. A great pleasure not only for motorized fans!

History comes alive

This museum is different and therefore itself a kind of prototype. The aim is to convey a passion for beautiful design and powerful engines. Thus, under the motto "Persons. Power. Cars.” around 50 interesting cars are presented as well as insights into the lives of legendary racing drivers and designers. History comes alive in this way. Small objects selected with great attention to detail from the everyday life of the pioneers of motor sport (correspondence, trophies of victory, curious key rings) round off the picture in miniature, which the detailed information texts with facts and anecdotes create in the minds of the visitors.

Sports & racing cars from 80 years of the automobile's history

The permanent exhibition focuses on sports and racing cars – especially early Porsche designs – from the middle of the last century, including the "Fetzenflieger" by Otto Mathé, the streamlined racing car by Petermax Müller and the legendary “Berlin-Rome-Wagen” Porsche Type 64, which is considered the "ancestor" of all Porsche sports cars. But representatives of the newer generation can also be admired, such as Michael Schumacher's first "company car". The exhibition “The Italian Job” presents Italian racing and sports car classics from illustrious brands such as Ferrari, Maserati, Lancia or Lamborghini. Anyone who wants to feel like a racing driver for a few minutes simply gets into the Porsche 356 driving simulator.

Of performance and elegant design

On three floors (around 2,500 m²) there is also a glass workshop, a small cinema, a library, an audio box with individually selectable engine sounds of the best-known sports and racing cars, a wind tunnel for researching one's own "streamline knowledge" as well as changing special exhibitions on the subject of "Fascination Automobiles". The adjacent museum café "Erlkönig" and the museum shop invite you to a relaxed "pit stop".

The home of the Automuseum

The impressive red brick building, built between 1902 and 1906, has been a listed building since 2005 and has been the seat of the PROTOTYP car museum since April 2008. The formerly boggy ground at Großer Grasbrook, southeast of the Speicherstadt, required a special construction technique: the backbone of the 70-meter-wide building forms a skeleton of 14 vertical steel piers and correspondingly many cast-iron crossbeams, which are mounted in joints. Under the direction of the museum founders Thomas König and Oliver Schmidt, the building was carefully modernised and, with the stylish material repetition of the historic cast iron elements in the interior and in the design of the entrance area, forms a striking solitaire in HafenCity.

A visit to the PROTOTYP car museum is not only a rewarding destination for technology enthusiasts, but also for anyone who enjoys the intelligent implementation of performance and attractive design.