Car factory visits
 

My husband and I and our 23 years old son would like to visit Germany/Italy for around 10 days in september. The men are particularly interested in visiting cars factories and museum, such as BMW, Porsche and Ferrari. Can someone help me planning our itinerary. Is it more practical to take train between the two countries or we can take turn to drive. Please suggest routing too. Thank you for all your help and advice.
Lita

Driving will most probably incur a steep extra fee for dropping off the car in another country as where you picked it up. So this option is only feasible if you plan to drive a loop Munich, Stuttgart, Modena/ Maranello and back to Munich. Which is not impossible. But considering gas and tolls may end up as the most costly option.

Between Munich and Stuttgart, the train will be the fastest and most convenient option. The latter as A8 usually gets lots of traffic.

Between Stuttgart and Modena you don't have non-stop flights, but I think you can get non-stop to Florence. Which would make a nice base either to explore the city itself before you go to Modena. And/or to explore Tuscany.

If you had to get back from Modena to Munich, you could take the train.

But it would be more convenient (and usually less costly as you safe on leg to travel) if you got an open jaw flight, in Munich, out Milan (or elsewhere in Northern Italy).

Thanks Cowboy for your prompt advice. Your are absolutely correct, toll and petrol are always out of budget, I will concentrate to plan our journey by train in this case. By the way how much does a litre of 95 petrol cost in Europe?

Currently 1.65€ in Germany and 1.82€ in Italy. Diesel is cheaper.

P.S.
You can check approximate costs for fuel and tolls at viamichelin.com
Diesel is around €1.45 in Germany, fuel in general is cheaper in Switzerland and Austria.

With 4 people traveling costs can be on par with train fares. My remark re. "most costly option" was more focused on the drop-off fee if you don't return the car in the country where you rented it. That fee can easily be in the hundreds of euros.

I did not mean that it was a luxury to rent a car for 2-4 days to explore Tuscany. You will hardly drive more than 200 or 300kms, so costs for fuel are not really a factor. Actually, if Tuscany was on your list, I would strongly recommend a car.

Stuttgart-Modena by train?
Well, you will obviously find some connections at bahn.com . After some quick browsing I see the option of either wasting a full day on the rail, or have somewhat uncomfortable night train connections which will make you get up at 5am in Bologna. Either with 2-4 changes. That is a scenario that makes most locals here check airfares.

You will be planning the Mercedes Benz musuem, right? If it's not on your list yet, pencil it in.

Wolfsburg VW factory tours?

The BMW headquarters in Munich is a popular tourist attraction, although not a factory. Its four round towers were ultra-modern architecture in the 1960s (or in Daffy Duck cartoons.) The attached museum contains lots of vintage cars and hype about future engineering. http://www.bmw-welt.com/web_rb/bmw-welt/en/index.html

Actually, the BMW headquarters in Munich are next door to mother of all BMW factories :-)
And you can visit the plant
http://www.bmw-welt.com/web_rb/bmw-w...tory_tour.html

That's why they call it "BMW World!"

When we arrived for our visit a group of school children were getting there at the same time. They were so excited about it, one would have thought it was made out of chocolate. It was impressive.

I still like MB better :)

The VW museum in Wolfsburg is sweet.

You can't visit the Ferrari factory w/o a personal invitation.

but you can visit this http://museo.ferrari.com/

Thanks folks for all your advice. I am already excited by all these recommendations, will keep me busy in the next few days searching!

Just wanted to mention, that although I haven't visited the Audi Museum. Judging from the map (I've researched it) it seems to make a nice little triange between Munich (BMW Weld) and Stuttgart (MB) Audi is in Ingolstadt.

I've only been to the MB, BMW and VW (I did enjoy the VW museum but imo, it's a long way for what it is.