Boxenstop Museum in Tubingen

From the outside, a little Boxenstop of delights

The Boxenstop Museum is a little gem tucked away within walking distance of Tubingen's city centre. Tubingen is a very picturesque university town between the Schwabisch Alp and the Schwarzwald. The city is full of magnificent half-timbered architecture and lies on the banks of the River Neckar.

Race bikes to be worshipped

The Boxenstop was highly recommended to me by friends in the area. It's the private collection of Rainer and Ute Klink and is often the scene of social events, model railway exhibitions in the winter and classic car runs in the summer. I had tried to visit this small but perfectly museum before. However, the time available to me coincided with the museum's closing hours. On my latest visit I managed to find it open.

I say small but it has some 80 cars and motorcycles on display. Although a private collection where space is at a premium, it's well laid out and doesn't feel cramped.

BMW 700S - yes please!

The museum was established in 1985 and contains a variety of competition and racing cars as well as rare road vehicles. Some of these are almost unknown to British enthusiasts, like the Horex motorcycles, but others are famous but rare in the UK like Lola sports racing cars. Alongside the Lotus 15, this little Lola (only the fourth cat the company produced) this little car is just my sort of automobile.

I love low volume Ferraris like this 250GT

There are also many examples of model railways, some of them large scale live steam locomotives. For someone brought up just a few fields away from the Perranporth Model Engineering Society's railway track, these were of great interest. (Notice I resisted the temptation to pun this as grate interest)

There's a good selection of Beemers and also quite a few Horexes.

The Boxenstop is full of Vintage Things and although my German isn't brilliant I was able to make out the salient points of most of the exhibits.

I also had a discussion with a chap about BMW motorcycles. It seems we were both believers in Flat Air and had a surprisingly animated discussion about shock absorbers - I mean dampfers - but then I am a consummate mime.

As soon as the guy on the till learned I was British he gave me a little English language handout. Uncanny - all I asked for was admittance for one adult in my best Deutsch. I'm glad he did, though. 

I liked the way the motorcycle halls were laid out. With the bikes end to end like this you can not only look at their sides but also both of their sides. Other museums please copy!

There are so many goodies in the building you could almost get blind to them. I spent several hours wandering around trying to photograph the especially rare stuff we don't get back here in Blighty.

The feeling of this museum being a treasure trove or Little Box of Delights is strengthened by the automotive memorabilia and the way these car and bikes are presented. There's even a static recreation of a wall of death!

I particularly liked the way the Boxenstop is laid out. This is like a little shrine to sidecars and F3 Coopers but far from being dead deities - these machines are in running order.

I could name drop some of exhibits - Costin Lister-Jaguar (I love Jag racing specials!), an Alfa Zagato (I have a long standing fondness for Italian coachbuilding), a Chevron B5 (lovely), a Lola T212 (amazing), a Kawasaki KR250 (I'd never seen one of these close up before) and a streamlined two-stroke Lloyd record breaker (Die Weisse Maus).

I got the distinct impression Die Weise Maus was the proprietor's favourite, over and above, the Ferraris, glorious British café racers and the 1970s single seat racing cars.

The Boxenstop is not just for boys. There are whole interiors of doll's houses to admire. But girls like rolling sculpture anyway.

Go and have a look for yourself. You'll see what I mean.

P.S. According to my German dictionary, weiss Mause sehen, meaning to literally see white mice, is the German equivalent of seeing pink elephants...