Maybach Exhibition Booth at Motorworld Classics Bodensee (Lake Constance) 2022

May­bach Exhi­bi­tion Booth at Motor­world Clas­sics Bodensee (Lake Con­stance) 2022

More than 30,000 clas­sic car fans vis­it­ed the Motor­world Clas­sics Bodensee trade show in Friedrichshafen from May 06 to 08. This year’s key theme of the show was „100 Years of May­bach Auto­mo­biles“. The high­light was the exhi­bi­tion booth of the Wil­helm and Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion and the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V. We pre­sent­ed two very rare and elab­o­rate­ly restored May­bach auto­mo­biles of the SW 38 type as well as an extreme­ly rare wood­en under­body from the 1930s. At that time, the bod­ies of May­bach cars were built on such wood­en frames — for our trade show atten­dees an unheard sto­ry. In addi­tion, our inter­ac­tive and vir­tu­al pop-up exhi­bi­tion „100 Years of May­bach Auto­mo­biles 1921 — 2021“ was on dis­play. The clas­sic car fans of all ages were equal­ly enthu­si­as­tic. 

In the past two years, the Motor World Clas­sics Bodensee exhi­bi­tion had to be post­poned again and again due to the COVID 19 pan­dem­ic. For this rea­son, the Wil­helm and Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion was unable to show the pop-up exhi­bi­tion „100 Years of May­bach Auto­mo­biles 1921 — 2021“ at the clas­sic car show in the anniver­sary year 2021 as planned. This year, the anniver­sary was final­ly cel­e­brat­ed in a big way — and the inter­est in the May­bach exhi­bi­tion stand of the Wil­helm und Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion and the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V. was over­whelm­ing! The trade show orga­niz­ers made the May­bach anniver­sary the focus of this year’s major event with over 30,000 vis­i­tors — and so the Motor­world Clas­sics Bodensee was all about 100 years of May­bach auto­mo­biles! At the offi­cial press con­fer­ence, Roland Bosch (mem­ber of the board Friedrichshafen Trade Fair), full of antic­i­pa­tion, rec­om­mend­ed all jour­nal­ists to vis­it the May­bach booth and point­ed out the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of the May­bach com­pa­ny history:

“Along­side the Zep­pelin and Dornier com­pa­nies, it was May­bach’s auto­mo­biles that made Friedrichshafen famous world­wide. […]the spe­cial exhi­bi­tion of the Wil­helm und Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion in coöper­a­tion with the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V. con­veys to the pub­lic that inno­va­tion and inter­na­tion­al­ly suc­cess­ful auto­mo­bile con­struc­tion took place here in the region“. Roland Bosch — Friedrichshafen Trade Fair

At the end of the press con­fer­ence, a mem­ber of the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V. and the May­bach Club pre­sent­ed his May­bach car of the type SW 38 built in 1939. Roland Bosch, Peter Schnei­der and last but not least the rac­ing leg­end Geb­hard Zeller were very impressed by the huge May­bach car. The 89-year-old Geb­hard Zeller was born in Friedrichshafen. He knows the his­to­ry of May­bach Motoren­bau GmbH and, as a clas­sic car fan, he is very excit­ed to see the May­bach car once again. The proud own­er of the May­bach „Type SW 38“ start­ed the engine, did a lap of hon­or and drove the clas­sic car to the May­bach booth — This was the unof­fi­cial open­ing of the Motor­world Clas­sics Bodensee 2022!

On Fri­day, the doors opened for the fair vis­i­tors for three days. The rush of clas­sic car fans was already enor­mous on the first day of the event, well aware that there were two extreme­ly rare clas­sic cars pre­sent­ed at the May­bach stand. On the one hand, the world’s only pre­served May­bach auto­mo­bile with a body by the coach­builder Ignaz Theodor Petera & Söhne and, on the oth­er hand, a May­bach „Type SW 38“ Cabri­o­let built in 1938 in a won­der­ful orig­i­nal state of preser­va­tion. The for­mer vehi­cle was in the USA for 70 years and was ful­ly restored in Ger­many. Both vehi­cles belong to own­ers from Lake Con­stance and the Friedrichshafen region. Thus, the two auto­mo­biles were brought back to the place of their ori­gin.   But that was not all that was on dis­play at the May­bach stand. The Wil­helm and Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion pre­sent­ed the pop-up exhi­bi­tion „100 Years of May­bach Auto­mo­biles 1921 — 2021“. Sep­tem­ber 23, 2021 marked the hun­dredth anniver­sary of the pre­mière of the first May­bach auto­mo­bile „Type ²²⁄₇₀ hp — W 3“ to be built in series. The car was unveiled at the Ger­man Motor Show in Berlin in 1921 and impressed the pub­lic with its extreme­ly high qual­i­ty of work­man­ship and tech­ni­cal fea­tures. For exam­ple, a four-wheel brake sys­tem was fit­ted as stan­dard in a Ger­man auto­mo­bile for the first time and the car could be dri­ven with­out shift­ing gears. The May­bach „Type W 3“ already rep­re­sent­ed the engi­neer­ing prin­ci­ples accord­ing to which auto­mo­biles of the May­bach brand were to be devel­oped and man­u­fac­tured under the direc­tion of Karl May­bach in Friedrichshafen: Metic­u­lous pre­ci­sion for the high­est qual­i­ty. Only the best mate­ri­als, mate­ri­als for the great­est pos­si­ble  oper­a­tional reli­a­bil­i­ty, and the use of lead­ing edge tech­nol­o­gy for the opti­mum in com­fort­able dri­ving. In our blog arti­cle from Octo­ber 2021 you can read every­thing about the 100 years of May­bach automobiles.

Links: https://​may​bach​.org/​1​0​0​-​y​e​a​r​s​-​o​f​-​m​a​y​b​a​c​h​-​a​u​t​o​m​o​b​i​l​e​s​-​1​921 – 2021/

The spe­cial exhi­bi­tion „100 Years of May­bach Auto­mo­biles 1921 — 2021“ tells the exten­sive sto­ry of auto­mo­bile con­struc­tion at May­bach-Motoren­bau GmbH in nine chap­ters. The devel­op­ment line of the his­toric May­bach car mod­els is shown, as well as a selec­tion of the Mer­cedes-May­bach vehi­cles that have been relaunched since 2002. Begin­ning in 1919 with the „Ver­such­swa­gen 1“ (Exper­i­men­tal car 1) with the new­ly devel­oped „W 1“ car engine, through the May­bach auto­mo­biles of the „Type W 3“ and „Type W 5“, to the leg­endary May­bach „Type 12 Zep­pelin“ of the 1930s and on to the high-sell­ing May­bach „Schwingach­swa­gen“. With the pre­sen­ta­tion of mod­ern Mer­cedes-May­bach with elec­tric dri­ves, the exhi­bi­tion final­ly takes a look into the future of auto­mo­bil­i­ty. Select­ed objects from the muse­um col­lec­tion of the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V. and the Wil­helm und Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion were pre­sent­ed on the themes of auto­mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy, car-rac­ing and the May­bach cor­po­rate val­ues.  

The exhi­bi­tion for­mat invit­ed all trade show vis­i­tors to become active and explore the May­bach sto­ry them­selves. Four­teen inter­ac­tive the­mat­ic mod­ules with auto­mo­bile por­traits of unique vehi­cle his­to­ries, dig­i­tized exhibits and eye­wit­ness reports from May­bach employ­ees could be explored inter­ac­tive­ly. To give just one exam­ple, we told the adven­tur­ous sto­ry about the trans­fer trips of May­bach chas­sis to the body builders — see our pic­ture. As an auto­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­er, May­bach-Motoren­bau pro­duced from 1921 to 1941 only the chas­sis with engine, trans­mis­sion and steer­ing. The rest of the car body is built indi­vid­u­al­ly to cus­tomer spec­i­fi­ca­tions by spe­cial­ized coach­builders. In addi­tion to Auer in Stuttgart, Erd­mann & Rossi in Berlin and Gläs­er in Dres­den, Her­mann Spohn in Ravens­burg pro­duced most of the May­bach car bod­ies. Hard­ly imag­in­able, the bare chas­sis are trans­ferred by fac­to­ry dri­vers in wind and weather.

Anoth­er high­light of the May­bach stand was an orig­i­nal wood­en body under­frame for a May­bach type SW 38 car from the 1930s. At this point you need to know: May­bach Motoren­bau GmbH in Friedrichshafen pro­duced the chas­sis with engine and sold it to its cus­tomers. The cus­tomer could then have the body designed and pro­duced by a coach­builder entire­ly accord­ing to his (or her) indi­vid­ual wish­es. A car­riage builder hand­made a base accord­ing to the design tem­plate. Wood was used as a build­ing mate­r­i­al because it was more flex­i­ble and malleable.

Also, accord­ing to the design tem­plate, a tin­smith hand-mount­ed indi­vid­ual met­al sheets on this wood­en frame — this type of pro­duc­tion is called “Plank­ing.”  Thus, in painstak­ing work, step by step, the entire body was cre­at­ed. The wood­en frame remained as a sup­port­ing frame­work under the met­al body. Just a few years ago, the May­bach car was com­plete­ly restored. The wood­en frame had to be replaced with a new one. The own­er of the May­bach car has kept the wood­en frame as a tes­ti­mo­ny of time. A com­pa­ra­ble object is pre­sent­ed at the Muse­um for His­toric May­bach Vehi­cles in Neu­markt. Beyond that, we know of no oth­er exam­ple. Tru­ly, a very excit­ing sto­ry with a very rare object.

With the var­ied edu­ca­tion­al offer, con­sist­ing of clas­si­cal media and at the same time con­tem­po­rary mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion forms, auto­mo­bile fans of dif­fer­ent age groups were addressed. The spe­cial fea­ture of this year’s May­bach stand at Motor­world Clas­sics Bodensee was the com­bi­na­tion of a clas­sic car show with rare May­bach cars and a mod­ern spe­cial exhi­bi­tion with orig­i­nal con­tem­po­rary tes­ti­mo­ni­als from May­bach auto­mo­tive his­to­ry. The clas­sic car fans were also able to talk to for­mer employ­ees of May­bach Motoren­bau GmbH, mem­bers of the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V. and the team of May­bach his­to­ri­ans from the Wil­helm and Karl May­bach Foundation.

For the Wil­helm and Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion and the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V., the appear­ance at Motor­world Clas­sics Bodensee 2022 was a tremen­dous accom­plish­ment.. We would like to thank all vis­i­tors and Messe Friedrichshafen and look for­ward to see­ing you again next year.