Brand Pavilions

ABOVE: Every 20 minutes, the Lamborghini pavilion puts on a show of steam, lightning, and thunder. INSET BELOW: The Bentley pavilion,  the Volkswagen car pavilion, and a child reflecting on rear-view mirrors at the Škoda pavilion.

A World's Fair for car buffs

The Volkswagen Group owns many different car brands, from the obvious (VW) to the not so obvious (Bentley, Lamborghini, Škoda, and Seat). Autostadt's brand pavilions promote the individual brands in surprisingly different ways.

For example, Škoda featured art from the Czech Republic during my visit, while Lamborghini's pavilion releases a "captive" sports car from a cube-shaped monolith in a dramatic show of lightning, thunder, and simulated smoke.

My own favorite pavilions are Bentley (where you can see the materials and craftmanship that go into Bentley's luxury cars) and the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles pavilion (which features trucks, campers, and other working vehicles built on VW chassis).

Except for the Lamborghini pavilion, which has shows every 20 minutes, you can wander in and out of the brand pavilions as your tastes and attention span dictate. (That's probably just as well, since--like pavilions at a World's Fair--Autostadt brand pavilions can be fun or boring, depending on your interests.)