Mercedes Benz Kompressor Club

Several members of Germany's Mercedes Benz Kompressor Club for vehicles produced between 1927 and 1934 attended the Coys International Historic Festival Meeting with their cars in July 1994 and took part in a demonstration run around the circuit.

Pictured here in the paddock are some of those cars and on the right is an earlier model, a 4-cylinder inline 2 litre Mercedes, one of three cars that contested the Targa Florio race in 1924. The race took part on the mountain roads near Palermo in Sicily over 4 laps of the 108 kilometre long circuit. The cars were driven by Christian Werner, Christian Lautenschlager and Alfred Neubauer who finished in first, tenth and fifteenth places respectively in the overall standings, and in the first three places in the 1,501 to 2,000cc class. Alfred Neubauer became the Mercedes Benz team leader from 1926 until racing ended in 1939 before the outbreak of war, and was team manager again in 1954 and 1955 when Mercedes Benz returned to racing for those two years. The programme of the event had this note about the Kompressor Club: