Bumper cars on the Autobahn ride, Stuttgart 1937
Small electric cars race along a wooden track divided by a padded barrier under a booth lettered AUTOBAHN, waved on by an attendant.
A long track of wooden planks is split down the middle by a low, padded barrier, and small electric cars with rounded bonnets, one with HAASE on its grille, run up and down it and swing round the ends. An attendant in knickerbockers stands at the turn and points the drivers on: two young women in coats, women in hats, a man in a bowler hat sitting bolt upright. Along the far side runs a booth lettered AUTOBAHN, and beyond the fair a factory chimney smokes over the town.
The Reichsautobahn, built under Fritz Todt since 1933, was the regime's proudest image of progress, and its first stretch opened in May 1935. Few Germans owned a car; for most, the fairground motorway was the only one they would drive on before the war.
