The Volkswagen Factory

Unbeknownst to us, Dresden is the home of Volkswagen's "transparent factory" where they make the company's most ungodly luxurious vehicle, the Phaeton.  After learning that this particular factory encourages the public to visit, and even has a cafe and lounge, we decided we had to have a look.

This is just a small piece of the factory.  The large tower you see here is FULL of the Phaeton cars waiting to be picked up in person by their buyers.  Starting at around 128,000.00 euros, this bad boy is no joke.

Here is the main entrance to the factory.  As you can see, the entire building is glass, that way the public can look in and see the cars being made (that they will probably never be able to afford).

 

The Phaeton in all of its exterior glory.  This thing is truely insane; everything from the grain of the wood in the interior matches up (the wood by the way comes from the root or trunk of various trees).  The Phaeton is so blasted luxurious it is almost sickening.  I for one would be scared to sit in the thing less I dirty the varnish.  The seats are so sophistcated that they have over a dozen comfort adjustment settings and a heat vent complete with ultra quiet fans to keep you from getting that anoying back sweat (not that you would because the climate control is like something out of a Gene Roddenberry novel).

 

In the Lounge area they had on display an older model GTI that is on loan from one of the employees.  Despite being old, this car is in immaculate condition.  Not a lot in the way of bells and whistles but personally, I found it to be much more to my taste.  All in all, the factory and the cars were very impressive if a touch on the obsenely nice side.