Berlin - Porsche inaugurated Wednesday an audaciously designed museum to house the sports car maker's collection of 80 classic cars and lure tourists to the German city of Stuttgart.

The steel-framed, aluminium-sheathed building, looking like a piece of giant origami, has most of its sculpted walls tilting outwards and symbolizes the predator-animal spirit that many Porsche drivers mentally associate with their upmarket brand.

Porsche lavished 100 million euros (130 million dollars) on the prestige project, facing its main office across a busy intersection in the Stuttgart suburb of Zuffenhausen and setting a contrast to the drab factory buildings where the cars are built.

It was also playing catch-up to German brands Daimler and Volkswagen, which each have architecturally striking museums that attract huge numbers of tourists keen to see the history, and future, of the cars they adore.

The 5,600-square-metre museum is to be "our company's showcase," chief executive Wendelin Wiedeking said at the inauguration. The museum is scheduled to open to the public this Saturday and is expected to attract 200,000 visitors annually.

Porsche, whose fabulous stock-market profits have prompted its rivals to belittle it as "a hedge fund with a car factory attached," is currently preparing a four-door sedan, the Panamera, to add to its range of sports cars and the Cayenne sports utility vehicle.

Contrasting with its fabled industrial efficiency, Porsche endured delays and cost over-runs at the building, which was originally scheduled to open in 2007 and to cost only half as much.

Building something that perhaps most resembles an intergalactic space cruiser from a science fiction movie was a challenge, with the building's 35,000 tons resting on just three anchors in the soil.

Viennese architect Roman Delugan said he conceived the building, with its white-painted aluminium exterior and a reflecting underside, as a "living organism in symbiosis with its surroundings." The interior is almost completely white.

The ground-floor foyer is comparatively tiny. The visitor mounts an elevator to the exhibition area, where pride of place goes to a replica of the Type 64, the 1939 racing-car design by company founder Ferdinand Porsche.

Visitors can see the work of the original Porsche design bureau including the original Volkswagen Beetle, commissions for Mercedes- Benz, which is now a cross-town rival, and contemporary sports cars.

Company spokesman Anton Hunger said, "The coolness of the architecture is a deliberate contrast to the rounded shapes of the typical Porsche."

Visitors are not allowed to get inside the cars on display, but if they want to enjoy the throaty revving of a 911, they can step inside a "sound shower" to hear burbling recordings of the characteristic noise. (dpa)