Here are the pics i promised from the collection i was invited to see last week. I have covered up faces etc to for respect reasons and that the owner doesnt want anyone to know who he is or where these cars are. For some reason i didnt get a shot of Gilles Villeneuve's F1 car, but you can just see it in the background shot of the back of the Maser. One car he didnt let me photograph was his daily drive - A porsche 911 FF - which im told just broke the Mclaren F1's fastest time, an £85,000 upgrade on a 911 Turbo. The £8 Million pound car - 1939 Auto Union D type Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
woops - more Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
he might have the cars mate but you have the best ferrari clothing collection that i have seen i am proud of you Image Unavailable, Please Login
there was a detailed page all about the car and its history, will try and get a copy ! Forgot to mention, he does drive it on the roads every now and again !!
i believe there were 20 ! 2 dont belong to him, and he has others in another location, but not on this scale !
for insurance reason's on the Auto Union car, there has to be a security guard there at all times !!!
That is a little frightening! I was there too! I presume these photos are from the open day on the Thursday...??? If you saw two scruffy people in jeans and trainers....that was Myself and an American Gumballer! Trust me to lower the tone! My Exige was parked outside although, very very dirty! Ed
Great pictures Reggie. I remember reading about the restoration of an Auto Union D type, it HAS to be this car. When they where rebuilding the engine block the mechanics found a tiny star of david etched somewhere hidden from site on the block, obviously done by one of the guys working in the Auto Union racing department in the late '30's. Remember these cars and the Merc W154 were Hitlers great attempt at PR for Germany and everything german in the 30's. Cheers Simon
Yes, mine was the Red 360 parked outside the front door. Wasnt there all day as i had a meeting but later on in the day !
1939 Auto Union D-Type. When Germany was undergoing a change of government in 1933 and the Nazi Party were striving to make the country a more powerful one they encouraged German motor firms to take up motor racing, in order to boost their countrys prestige throughout the world. With the beginning of a new racing Formula in 1934 a fresh name appeared in grand Prix racing Auto Union and it was a racing organisation supported by four German motor manufacturers: Audi, Wandered, Horch and D.K.W., while the badge of the Auto Union comprised four interlocked rings, representing the four parent companies. In 1933 Dr Ferdinand Porsche had completed the designs for a remarkable 16-cylinder supercharged rear-engined racing car, with independent suspension to all four wheels, and he sold this design to the newly formed Auto Union and joined them as a consultant designer and development engineer. By the end of the 1930s Auto Union and Mercedes Benz had dominated the Grand Prix Formula with almost complete totality. This was the era of the Silver Arrows, both teams being turned out in polished metal finish, legend has it that this became the German adopted racing colour after Neubauer turned out the Mercedes team in the regulation white and then had to strip them all of paint as they were marginally over weight! By 1938 the Grand Prix Formula had been changed to three litres, from the former open limit, and Auto Union had adopted a V12 engine with a 2,990cc capacity. This car, on display here, featured two stage super charging and three over head camshafts/ The power was transmitted through a five speed manual gear box, whilst the suspension was retained as fully independent all round. The frame was tubular and a maximum speed of 185mph was genuinely attainable. This car is chassis number 21 and was preserved during the war in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Many of the former Nazi funded racing cars were taken behind the irpn curtain at the cessation of hostilities in 1945, some are alleged to still be there, the late Terry Cohn devoting many years and much money on the ultimately fruitless search for a car legend told was still in Czechoslovakia. This car is believed to be the very one in which legendary ace Tazio Nuvolari won the final Grand Prix to be held at Donington before the War in 1938. The cars were always twitchy and prone to twitching their tales and it was only drivers of supreme talent such as Achiele Varzi, Hans Stuck, Bernd Rosemeyer and Nuvolari himself who were able to, regularly at least, take the tiger by its tail. Simply a stunning motor car, redolent of its era and, together with the W125 Mercedes cars, epitomised the pinnacle of brute-force racing.
