Auto Union D-type

In March 1996 I made a visit to the Donington Park Museum to see a special car. It was one of a group of Auto Union racing cars that disappeared after the Second World War when the part of Germany where they had been produced and were stored was occupied by Soviet Russia when the war ended, and all the remaining cars were transported to Russia. It was generally assumed that after the Russians had gleaned what information they could from the cars they had all been destroyed. With the breakdown of the USSR, however, several of these cars came to light and one by one the remains were resuscitated by the engineers at Crosthwaite and Gardiner in Buxted, East Sussex. This is one of those cars and was on display at the Donington Park Museum for a period after its restoration.

It's a 1938 Auto Union D-type which had a supercharged 3 litre V12 engine.

The D-type was driven in 1938 by Hermann Müller, Rudolf Hasse, Christian Kautz, Hans Stuck, Tazio Nuvolari and Ulrich Bigalke.....

.....and in the curtailed 1939 season by Herman Müller, Tazio Nuvolari. Rudolf Hasse, Georg Meier and Hans Stuck.

I went to Donington Park that day as I thought that it would be the only chance I would get to see this car that I'd read so much about since I was a youngster.

Five years later, however, at the VSCC's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Donington Park, Audi brought along  restored Auto Union C-type and D-type models which were displayed in the paddock and took part in demonstration runs round the circuit.

I showed photographs of these cars on 2 December 2012.....

.....and also on 10 August 2016.