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Sunday 2 December 2012

The Return of Auto Union - Donington Park May 2001

May 2001 marked the first appearance of the Auto Union C-type and D-type Grand Prix cars at Donington Park since the late 1930s. Here, interspersed with photographs I took of the cars that weekend, is what the programme of the event said about the circumstances surrounding their reappearance:

'Memories of Bernd Rosemeyer and Tazio Nuvolari wrestling their fearsome mid-engined Auto-Unions to victory in the 1937 and '38 Grands Prix helped fuel Tom Wheatcroft's  ambition to bring back racing to Donington Park. Yet back in the '70s, as Tom's JCBs shaped his dream into reality, even this master of the impossible could not have dreamt that one day his circuit would reverberate again to the awesome bellow of these V12 and V16 Silver Arrows. The cars had vanished into thin air.

1937 Auto Union C-type

'While most of their Mercedes-Benz challengers had surfaced safely in the West after WW2, the legends from Zwickau, Saxony, had evaporated into Russia. Grabbed by the Soviets as war reparations in 1945, 18 hidden Auto Union team cars had been packed on a train to Moscow. Distributed to motor manufacturers and research institutes, the most advanced racing cars of their epic era gradually succumbed to breakers' yards. The only reminder in the West of Auto Union's halcyon racing days was a V16 C-type show chassis in Munich's Deutsches Museum. Against all odds, though, just as Donington's revival gathered pace, seeds of an Auto Union renaissance were germinating. Years later they would flower in rural East Sussex where VSCC members Dick Crosthwaite and John Gardiner have combined their engineering talent for nearly 40 years. Today, Crosthwaite and Gardiner's base at Buxted has replaced the pre-war Horch Works in Zwickau as the epicentre of Auto Union Grand Prix car expertise. For six years it has been home to one of the most important racing car restoration projects ever as C&G has reinstated the lost Grand Prix heritage of Audi, a founder of the Auto Union with DKW, Horch and Wanderer in 1932 and owner of the name.
The first sign that not all Auto Union's racers had perished came when Count Doenhoff repatriated to Germany a 1938 Auto Union V12 D-type display car, war-locked in Czechoslovakia. Acquired from him by American Kerry Payne, its revival as a working car was entrusted to Colin Crabbe in the UK. VSCC stalwart Neil Corner became its next owner.

1938 Auto Union D-type

'Then, an ex-HP Mueller 1939 V16 3-litre C/D short-wheelbase Mountain Climb car turned up in the Riga Motor Museum, Latvia after museum founder Viktors Kulbergs negotiated a remarkable rescue from Zil's Moscow factory in 1976. The only surviving complete, original V16 Auto Union team car was just hours from being scrapped.
Next to re-emerge was a pair of V12 3-litre D-type Grand Prix cars – one 1938, the other to final '39 two-stage supercharged specification – brought out of Russia piecemeal over several years by Florida couple Paul and Barbara Karassik. One by one, Crosthwaite and Gardiner has resuscitated these surviving Auto Unions.


1937 Auto Union C-type

'Dick and John's introduction to the marque came when Corner asked them to sort out his problematic ex-Payne D-type. Experience gained led to a commission  from the Karassik's to rebuild their two D-types. After restoration, C&G demonstrated both at the Nurburgring in Autumn 1994. Among admirers were Audi people from Ingolstadt, coincidentally negotiating to acquire the Riga museum's V16 Mountain Climb car. It wasn't long before they knocked on C&G's door.
Audi delivered its mountain climber to C&G in July 1995, by which time the brief had escalated into the still-current grand project. It started with the mountain climber's restoration and creation of a clone replacement for the Riga museum. Next came a Grand Prix V16 C-type recreation identical to Rosemeyer's 1936 European Championship-winning car. A sister car followed for VW's Wolfsberg Museum. Then the piece de resistance: a sensational recreation of a 1937 Auto Union V16 Streamliner. Finally, and still in build for Audi's Belgian importer, there's a recreation of a 1934 A-type.


1938 Auto Union D-type

'The scale and precision of the project is mind-blowing. Every component, even nuts, bolts and fasteners, has been faithfully reproduced, mostly in-house using the Mountain Climb car as a template. The Deutsches Museum C-type came to Buxted so C&G could copy the rear swing axle. Chassis were built from specially sourced steel tubing to match the original. Everything had to be made from scratch, mostly without drawings, a challenging task even for C&G's flexible workshops, where ancient machine tools sit side by side with the latest CNC equipment. Suspension uprights, delicately finned brake drums and magnesium backplates pay tribute to extraordinary skills.

1937 Auto Union C-type and 1938 Auto Union D-type

'But C&G's most awe-inspiring achievement has been to authentically reproduce from the mountain climber's original 520bhp/630lb ft C-type unit a series of the massive, 6-litre V16 aluminium engines. Each takes around 600 hours to build. Apart from the obvious multiple components, reflect on this; the segmented Hirth crankshaft contains around 700 components. And how, without drawings and unable to section the original, do you reproduce the hugh crankcase? "Put yourself in the minds of the people who made it and think about period manufacturing methods," says John Gardiner. "You know they had to make it this way."
That's the principal adopted, too, by Roach Manufacturing, run by VSCC member Keith Roach near Southampton, which has built all the Bodies without drawings. After delicately restoring the mountain climber's aged alloy and building its clone, Roach's artist in metal, Gary Yates, recreated C-type bodies, including tanks, from photographs and his knowledge of the old-time panel beater's art. But it's the Streamliner's body that's the finest monument to his skills and research.
When Audi's V16 C-type and ex-Karassik D-type celebrate Auto Union's great Donington Grand Prix victories this weekend it will be a tribute to British craftsmen who've made the impossible come true.'


1937 Auto Union C-type (above) and 1938 Auto Union D-type (below)
rounding Coppice Corner on a demonstration run

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