Prototype Museum, Automobile museum in HafenCity, Germany.
The Prototype Museum is an automobile museum in HafenCity, Hamburg, dedicated to German sports and racing cars built after World War II. The collection brings together self-built one-off vehicles and historic racing models, covering several decades of German motorsport engineering.
The museum opened in 2008, growing out of a private collection that gradually became a public exhibition space. Its location in HafenCity reflects the transformation of Hamburg's former port area into a cultural and leisure district.
The museum's motto, Personen. Kraft. Wagen., reinterprets the German abbreviation PKW (car) as three equal elements: people, power and vehicles. The founders Thomas König and Oliver Schmidt built the collection around the idea that stories tell history, so display cases and floor-level text panels recount the fates of drivers and constructors alongside the cars.
The museum is in HafenCity, within walking distance of the Elbphilharmonie, and easy to reach by subway or on foot. It is wheelchair accessible and open most days of the week, though it closes on Mondays.
Inside the museum there is a walk-in Audiobox where visitors can listen to the sounds of real racing engines recorded during actual races. Next to it, a driving simulator built around a genuine Porsche 356 cockpit lets people feel what it was like to sit behind the wheel of one of these historic cars.
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