It is not my first time here,in fact my fourth, and each time I am blown away by the place

Picking up your car from the factory that built it sounds more like an inconvenience than an indulgence, but here at the Wolfsburg plant Volkswagen have turned the senseless into the sublime. It has to be said that this is nothing new for Volkswagen; a company after all that has always been full of surprises.

First off, they built a car (under the shadow of World War 2) for the price of a motorbike that could comfortably carry a fulsome family, badged it a Beetle and unknowingly spawned an unrelenting sub culture that will outlive the very air we breathe. Volkswagen then later astounded the world in the 1970s with the unsuspected launch of a 'sport' version of the Golf - the 110bhp GTI - thus kick-starting a whole hot-hatch phenomenon. Then many moons later they bought the Bugatti brand and built the 1000bhp Veyron at a loss of a few million dollars per car - and seemed smug about it.

And if that wasn't enough, they pulled the cloth from under the proverbial table by emulating the magnificent success of the original Mk1 Golf GTI (with the aid of a turbocharger) at the launch of the Mk5 GTI. So, it should come as no surprise whatsoever that Volkswagen has its own theme park, so to speak. The Autostadt - as it is known - opened its doors on the 1st of June 2000, after taking only two years to build. It is reported that the mighty Volkswagen Group invested something along the lines of 430 million euros to set up what they coined as a 'world forum for automobility,' on a 62-acre area of land at its headquarters in Wolfsburg.

As you'd expect, there are a few oddities dotted here and there, at the Autostadt, such as a matt black box pavilion that has a full scale Murcielago glued to the side of the main wall, tons of dry ice, and a museum with a Peugeot on the third floor! There is also an eco-robot that plants cress and allows you to name the plant and then follow its growth online, another robot that makes the same car every day out of clay, and a third (easily the most impressive) that controls the two glass towers of 300 customer cars apiece. One car is produced every 45 seconds here in Wolfsburg, and once the car rolls off the production line it is transported under-water from the factory to the glass towers by a robot; even the final parking process is fully automated, with no human interaction whatsoever. The intelligent system chooses where it should carefully park the car, and retrieves it once it is aware that the new owner has signed into the building, parking it in the waiting room where yet another Volkswagen customer eagerly awaits with a cup of coffee and biscuit in hand. Crazy stuff. In fact the whole place is a little crazy and, a must go see if you are in any way remotely interested in cars. Initial ideas for this and the arena in fact, were developed on how the Volkswagen factory could be designed to be more attractive for customers and the public. But it is not exclusively Volkswagen. Yes there are separate pavilions for all of VW's party pieces: Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Skoda, SEAT and, of course, Volkswagen - however, the museum is home to some exciting automobiles from many rival manufacturers; being more of a journey of the car rather than a timeline of VW's success.

There is a few day's worth of ambling to be done here, in and amongst endless cups of coffee and food at either of the nine restaurants (one of which sells the Volkswagen Curry Sausage) interactive activities and of course, souvenir shopping.

After Alejandro and I had skipped around all the automotive pavilions, made ourselves ill watching every interactive movie going, and got lost in the smoke tunnel, we hot-footed it to the Zeithaus (Time House) museum; six floors of window-to-guard rail retroness from every era. There are many cars on display, including the 1millionth Beetle with whitewall tyres and rhinestone-encrusted bumpers  - and some rather obscure design studies that thankfully avoided the production line.

Naturally I made a beeline for the floor with all the Mk1 Golf GTIs, which includes one of the first GTIs ever made, and one the last that actually went direct from the factory to storage; never been insured and never registered. It still has the factory build paper stuck to the windscreen! The many Mk1s share floor space with a number of bygone Audis, including the Polo equivalent, the 1974 Typ 86 Audi 50. There is also a well-used Lamborghini Muira and a very early 911. But fear not, there are much older mobiles on display, rolling with 10bhp on 22-inch wooden rims nonetheless.

It may be hard to believe that the Autostadt has established itself as a tourist destination, but funnily enough it is just that, attracting people in their droves, every day. It's an impressive sight, as the young and the old, families and those on their way to pick up their new automotive acquisitions partake in the whole VW vibe. And out of the 15 million visitors that have attended (as of April this year) one million have done so in order to collect a new car. Amazingly, 2.3 million guests arrived in the first two years of opening - more than double the expected number.

I must admit though it is not my first time here, in fact my fourth, and each time I am blown away by the place - for its vision, technology and architecture. Seriously, the list of things to go just goes on and on, most of which I only realised existed once I was reading the brochure on the way back on the plane: driver training, heaps of activities to entertain children, a factory tour, a boat trip on the Mittelland Canal and, if the pennies permit, a night or so in the five-star Ritz-Carlton Wolfsburg hotel, where we stayed for the weekend with a spectatular view over the canal to the Kraftwerk Volkswagen factory - once a 1940s power station, now a snap-shot of history and concert hall, where we were lucky enough to attend the internationally renowned Dance Festival Movimentos.

What Volkswagen have achieved here is an inspiration, blending the old with the new in an effortlessly timeless fashion. The Autostadt is pure dedication to the automobile as a whole, cleverly delivered by design and science - and not forcing the fact you are situated smack bang in the middle of the grounds of a car factory. I'll surely be back, again...