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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