Christie's auctions Auto Union Type D racing car

[serf2k]

From a notice I got the other day from Audi Media Services (quoted): "Perhaps the most expensive car ever to be sold in the history of the prestigious auction house Christie's is due to go under the hammer on 17 February at the international vintage car fair Retromobile in Paris: one of two remaining original Type D racing cars from Auto Union dating from 1939. Christie's has estimated the value of the car at 8.8 to 12 million euros. That would be a new record in the British auction house's long history. Worldwide interest in the vehicle is huge. For that reason, Christie's is holding a press conference in collaboration with Audi of America and Audi Tradition in New York on 25 January (10.30 am). Audi France will be exhibiting an original Auto Union Type D from Audi Tradition to mark the auction in Paris (12 February, 11.30 am). Auto Union is one of the brands that later jointly became AUDI AG. Audi Tradition keeps alive the memory of the legendary Auto Union Grand Prix racing cars. While the vehicle on auction will be on display in the Audi Forum New York (250 Park Avenue and 47th) on 25 January, the so-called sister car - the Auto Union Type D racing car from 1938 - will be making an appearance on 12 February in Paris (Bauer Saint Honore, 48 Place du Marche Saint Honore). Both of these Grand Prix cars made the journey from the former Soviet Union, having been transported there from Zwickau in eastern Germany after World War II by the Soviet occupation forces as spoils of war. In the 1980s the American Paul Karassik eventually brought them to the West having searched for over ten years and eventually finding the cars stripped down into individual parts in the former USSR. He then had them reassembled by specialists in Britain with technical support from AUDI AG. Subsequently AUDI AG acquired the 1938 car from Paul Karassik. The 1939 D Type passed into private ownership. The Auto Union engineers, headed by Robert Eberan-Eberhorst, developed the 12-cylinder Type D racing car for the 1938 racing season, in which new international Grand Prix regulations were introduced, limiting engine capacity to three litres. The fundamental technical design of the car - mid-mounted engine,torsion bar suspension, supercharged engine - essentially followed the model of its Type C predecessor, developed by Ferdinand Porsche for Auto Union with a 16-cylinder V-engine. In 1938 Auto Union won the Italian and British Grand Prix with the Type D racing car. The car was modified in 1939 with the addition of a twin compressor, which increased its engine power output from 420 to 460 bhp. Its top speed was 330 km/h and it was driven to victory at the Grand Prix in France and Yugoslavia. The top drivers of the Auto Union Type D racing car were Tazio Nuvolari, H.P. Muller, Hans Stuck, Rudolf Hasse and Georg Meier. Audi Tradition today once again owns four Auto Union Silver Arrows - the original Type D and Type C/D hill-climbing car and replicas of the original Type C Grand Prix car and the Type C Avus Streamline racing car. A further replica is still to be produced this year - a Auto Union Type D racing car of the 1939 generation with twin compressor. Experts from Audi Tradition will be on hand at the press conferences in New York and Paris and at the auction on 17 February at 6.30 pm on the Christie's stand at the Retromobile in Paris (Hall 7), where they will be available to answer specialist questions." Soo.....is this going to put Barrett Jackson to shame, or what? Cheers!

[summit25]

they have to be some of hte best looking cars ever produced. It will be great to see what it goes for in February.

[AU1000S]

I posted mine back in '03. Couldn't afford a real one so I made my own on a 1963 Auto Union chassis with the somewhat hot rodded 3cyl. 2-stroke 1000cc original engine. It's fun...Serf2k can attest to that, he saw it at Carlisle. I'll be happy to sell it for less than 10 million.. make me an offer.... Phil Friday
P.S. thanks Steve for keeping us up to date

[- GT Style -]

Rare race car expected to fetch millions at auctionAssociated Press


NEW YORK -- A rare Nazi-era race car hidden in a German mine shaft during World War II and said to be worth millions of dollars went on display Thursday.



Kathy Willens/AP Photo
A fabled 1939 Auto Union D-type racing vehicle is said to be one of the most important cars in auto racing history.
The sleek silver D-Type from Audi forerunner Auto Union was to be on display for two days at the car company's fancy showroom on Park Avenue. It will be auctioned as part of Christie's Retromobile auto sale Feb. 17 in Paris and is expected to fetch $12 million to $15 million.

Although Adolf Hitler gave about 500,000 reichsmarks to Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz to promote racing and technology, the car is not specifically affiliated with the Third Reich, Christie's said.

The car, one of only two in existence, is thought to be the grandfather of modern race cars. It revolutionized racing by putting the driver in front of the engine instead of behind it and reached speeds up to 185 mph.

"This car was really quite ahead of its time," said Rupert Banner, head of Christie's International Motor Cars division. "It was revolutionary. It changed the face of racing."

More than 20 Auto Union series cars were built between 1933 and 1939. This model, which has a body shaped like an airplane fuselage, was designed by Ferdinand Porsche. The driver sits sunken into the body of the metal, and the wheels, which look like oversized bicycle tires, have independent suspension.


"This car was really quite ahead of its time. It was revolutionary. It changed the face of racing."
-- Rupert Banner, head of Christie's International Motor Cars division
"There was a kind of memory loss after the war," Audi historian Thomas Erdmann said. "It took really until the early 1960s and later on to the 1980s for car design to catch up to these cars."

During the European motorsports heyday just before World War II, the D-Type won the 1939 French Grand Prix. The Silver Arrow, as it was known, was also filmed winding through country roads for use in newsreels across Europe. In racing, German cars were always silver, British were racing green and French were blue.

During World War II, Auto Union workers hid the cars in a mine shaft in eastern Germany to avoid using them for scrap metal. After the war, the Russians discovered the cars and took them home, along with dismantled Auto Union factories, to re-create motorsports.

"They vanished, lost behind the Iron Curtain," Erdmann said.

The cars were eventually taken apart. An American car collector came across car parts in a scrap heap in Ukraine and took them back to England, where experts Crosthwaite & Gardiner restored this car. Christie's did not say who is selling it.

• http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/news/s...=99&id=2743293

[serf2k]

Are you going to be at Carlisle again this year Phil? I want a ride this time!!!!
BTW, with (somewhat) available parts and roadworthyness...I'd say I'd prefer your car over the Type D....but I spent my $10M on some magic beans, sorry....
Cheers!

[- GT Style -]

$15 Million for a Car? Better Do the Research: Michael R. Sesit

By Michael R. Sesit

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Christie's International Motor Cars has withdrawn a multimillion-dollar vintage race car from auction, in a move that illustrates the risks associated with treating high-priced collectibles as legitimate investments.

On Feb. 9, Christie's said it was postponing the sale of a 1939 Auto Union Type D, ``pending further exploration into the car's race history.''

The company had planned to auction the racing car, considered a rare example of one of the great names of the sport, on Feb. 17 in Paris. Auto Union -- the forerunner to luxury-carmaker Audi AG -- and its German competitor, Mercedes-Benz, then dominated the Grand Prix circuit.

Christie's had estimated the car, which the auction house said Hermann Mueller piloted to victory in the 1939 French Grand Prix, would fetch $12 million to $15 million. That would be a record for a car sold at auction.

Indeed, for the crowd that plays golf at Pebble Beach, skies at St. Moritz and spends summers at their estates in the Hamptons, Christie's seemed to have just the thing to put the Joneses in their place.

Now, though, if you ever dreamed about owning an antique Ferrari, Jaguar or Aston Martin, this confusing -- even sorry -- episode should make you think twice.

`Strange'

``It's strange that such a high-value car be withdrawn a few days before the auction after all the time and effort devoted to marketing. It's unheard of,'' said Simon Kidston, a Geneva consultant to collectors of high-end autos. ``You don't market the car for six months and then say you have to research it.''

Prior to its withdrawal from sale, the single-seat racer with a polished-aluminum body and rare rear-mounted engine exuded awe, power and history.

``It's one of the ultimate cars of all time,'' Kidston said, before the postponement. ``It's rare; it sounds wonderful; it looks like nothing else, and it's got that aurora of intimidation.'' Just before being killed in an attempt at a land- speed record, Bernd Rosemeyer in 1938 pushed a predecessor machine close to 270 miles per hour (434 kilometers per hour).

Both the Auto Union and Mercedes racing projects were partially subsidized by Adolf Hitler, who saw their victories as evidence of German technological prowess. The Christie's auction catalog alludes to ``the German chancellor'' but never mentions Hitler.

Adolf and Big Joe

``His name is obviously a sensitive name to many people, and we don't wish to draw any more attention to him,'' said Rupert Banner, London-based head of the car department at Christie's. ``And he has no direct relationship to the vehicle.''

True enough. But come on. It wasn't Konrad Adenauer who financed these cars.

Josef Stalin also has a part, albeit a more tangential one. Following Germany's military defeat in 1945, the Red Army confiscated about 30 Auto Union racing cars and shipped them back to the Soviet Union, most likely to examine their engineering, according to Christie's.

There's also speculation that Vasily Stalin -- Soviet air- force general, car aficionado and Big Joe's son -- sought to build a Russian race team, according to 8w.forix.com, a not-for-profit Web site for motor enthusiasts.

After being variably disassembled, cut in half and left to rot, five cars survived, Banner said. Audi owns three, one of which is on display at the company's museum in Ingolstadt, Germany, and an Asian company has one. The fifth, first discovered in Kharkov in the 1980s, is the car that was to be auctioned at an extravagant price.

`Pretty Miserable Time'

That raises the question of whether classic cars are legitimate investments or just high-priced toys for big boys.

The answer is mostly the latter. The market for vintage cars appreciated at a steady pace in the early 1980s, soared in the second half of the decade, only to collapse in the early 1990s.

``It went down as quickly as it went up,'' said James Knight, head of the collectors' motoring department at auctioneers Bonhams in London. ``It was a pretty miserable time in the collectors' motor-car market. People don't want to buy a car if they feel in a year it will be 30 to 40 percent lower.''

Car owners who had borrowed to feed their habit faced a choice between servicing their mortgage or their car loans. They opted to keep their homes, prompting banks to repossess the vintage vehicles, dump them onto a fragile market and further depress prices. ``Banks collect money; they don't collect cars,'' Knight said.

By 1993, the market bottomed, and confidence since has steadily returned.

Wild and Woolly

Nonetheless, at what these machines sell for, you had better know what you're doing, or it's bye-bye pocketbook -- no matter how much cash you have to toss at a pastime. If you think emerging-market debt and equity investing is volatile, it's nothing compared with racing cars, whose prices can be as wild and woolly as the sport itself.

Consider the following: In late 1987, an Englishman paid about 1.5 million pounds, or about $2.7 million at the time, for a 1955 Mercedes Formula-1 car that had been raced by the great Juan Manuel Fangio. In May 1990 -- just 2 1/2 years later -- a Frenchman shelled out about $20 million for the same vehicle. It still stands as the highest price ever paid for a car in a private sale, Kidston said.

He said the investor's logic was that if a Vincent van Gogh painting can go for $50 million -- his Irises sold for $53.9 million in late 1987 -- less than half of that for the only postwar Mercedes Formula-1 car not owned by the manufacturer made sense.

`It's a Hobby'

So much for hard-nosed logic. In 1999, a German paid the Frenchman an estimated $10 million for the same hunk of metal. In 2003, it was sold again to a Middle Eastern investor. ``It's safe to say for somewhat more than $10 million,'' Kidston said.

``You shouldn't buy cars unless you will derive the fun factor -- the pleasure of ownership, the pleasure of knowing that it's in your garage and, of course, the pleasure of driving the car,'' Knight said. ``First and foremost, it's a hobby.''

What's more, unlike equities, owning cars entails paying storage, maintenance, repair and insurance bills. ``Shares require no maintenance,'' Knight said. ``Equally, you can get a lot of fun out of a car. You can't get much fun out of a share certificate.''

Still, if you think $15 million is too steep or harbor doubts about what your bidding on, for several hundred dollars, you can buy one of the almost 100 pedal cars Christie's is auctioning on Feb. 16.

Those are toys for real boys.

(Michael R. Sesit is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)