[Brookside]

1939 Auto Union Type D Goes on Auction at Christies/Paris

Auctioneer Expects Sale Price of $11.7 Million Dollars



Tazio Nuvolari driving Auto Union Type D

Auto-Union 1939 Grand Prix Car May Fetch Record Price in Sale

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- One of only two 1939 Auto-Union D- Type race cars believed to be in existence will be sold by Christie's International Plc in Paris next year, with the auctioneers predicting the highest price ever achieved for a car at auction.

The car, which carries chassis number 21, won the Belgrade Grand Prix in the hands of Italian ace Tazio Nuvolari, in an era when Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union, both of Germany, dominated Grand Prix racing, according to Christie's.

The auctioneer expects the car to fetch about 6 million pounds ($11.7 million), exceeding the 5.5 million pounds paid for a 1931 Bugatti Type 41 Royale Sports Coupe in November 1987.

``We're delighted to be entrusted with this car,'' Rupert Banner, the director of Christie's Car Department, said in an interview. ``Due to its near-mythical status we're confident it will break the world record price for a car.''

The D-Type, with its massive V-12 engine located in the center of the chassis and churning out 550 brake horsepower, was ideally suited to Nuvolari's aggressive driving style, and he drove the car to victory in Belgrade in the months before World War II broke out.

Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 and, eager to boost Germany's international standing, he offered a prize of 500,000 Reichmarks (about $100,000 at 1930s exchange rates) to the manufacturer that could design and produce a Grand Prix car by 1934. He was persuaded to split the prize between Mercedes- Benz, with their W25, and Auto-Union, which produced the C-Type, designed by Ferdinand Porsche with a centrally located V16 engine; that car gave rise to the later D-Type.

As attacks on Germany increased in World War II, engineers at Zwickau, in Saxony, hid the cars, only for them to be destroyed or taken as war booty by Russian soldiers.

Chassis 21 was discovered, in pieces, at a ZIL automobile factory in Moscow, waiting to be crushed for scrap in 1976.

Rescued by Latvian enthusiasts, it ended up in England and was fully restored by classic car experts Crosthwaite & Gardner in 1994.

Christie's spokeswoman Zoe Schoon said the seller had requested anonymity.

Auto-Union grouped German carmakers Horch, Audi, DKW and Wanderer in 1932 as a means of surviving the effects of the worldwide great depression.

The auction will be staged in Paris on Feb. 16 and 17, 2007.


Source: BloombergNews 12/1/006

[Brookside]

Part of the allure for this car, aside from it's racing provenance is it's historical linkage to German National Socialism.
Over on GCZ.com a similar thread on the upcoming sale of this Auto Union Type D calls it "Hitler's car."

In other words, for some, this is Nazi memorabilia.
And it isn't the only item recently up on the auction block that has ties to the Nazi era.
In November at Christies New York in a landmark sale, the biggest in auction history,
nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of Impressionist and modern art changed hands.

The sale included an estimated $125 million worth of artworks that had recently been returned to the heirs of owners
from whom they were looted by the Nazis during World War II.
Before restitution, five had been hanging in museums.

In June of this year Ronald S. Lauer, the cosmetics heir, bought a 1912 portrait of Austrian socialite Adele Bloch Bauer for a record $134 million dollars.
Painted by Gustav Klimt, it was commisssioned by Adele's husband turn-of-the century sugar industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.
In January, an arbitration court ruled that the paintings,
including works by Gustav Klimt and Paul Gaugin, had been improperly seized when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938.
They were then handed over to a niece of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer, Maria Altmann of Los Angeles who authorized their sale.

Christies November sale of Gustav Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer II"

source: NYT/Carol Vogel

[Brookside]

Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I", 1912.

[Brookside]

Auto Union Type D and driver Tazio Nuvolari

NEW YORK (Dec. 6) -- A rare 1939 German sports car commissioned by Adolf Hitler is expected to command the highest price ever paid for any automobile at auction,
according to Christie's, which will conduct the auction in Paris in February 2007.

The car, one of five remaining "Auto Union D-Types," is expected to sell for as much as $12 million, said Rupert Banner, head of Christie's motor cars department.

In 1933, after becoming Chancellor of Germany, Hitler offered 500,000 reichmark for a company to design a race car to show off the nation's technological prowess.
Originally, Mercedes-Benz got the nod. But Ferdinand Porsche, then an engineer working with Auto Union, which today is known as Audi,
was able to secure the financing to build a revolutionary car he had designed.

That car was modified over the next few years to become the 1939 Auto Union D-Type.

The D-type had a number of features that were extremely advanced for its day, including an engine mounted behind the driver and four-wheel independent suspension.
Its twin-supercharged 3-liter V12 engine can produce 485 horsepower, giving the car a top speed of 185 miles per hour.

In many ways, the D-type offered a glimpse into what would become the future of racing. It's fundamentally very similar to Formula 1 and Indy race cars of today.
"It's the same as a modern day race car, just without fins," said Banner.


One thing it doesn't have, ofcourse, is modern safety technology. Race cars in those days didn't even have seatbelts. It was seen as preferable to be thrown from the car in a crash.
One safety advance the D-type did have was a removable steering wheel, allowing the driver to be more easily removed in the event of a fire.

D-type cars won several Grand Prix races throughout Europe.
Two days after Germany invaded Poland, the same day that Great Britain declared war on Germany, the car Christie's will be auctioning won a Grand Prix race in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Banner said.
It was the last race held in Europe until after the war. "This was a legendary period in racing," Banner said of the pre-war years.

A number of D-type cars were lost or destroyed after World War II, according to Christie's.
The car that will be sold in Paris was taken to Russia after the war, where it was disassembled to study its technology.

The car was re-discovered in Ukraine in the late 1980s. It was still in pieces, but was otherwise undamaged. Another car discovered nearby had had its chassis sawed in half, Banner said.

The current record for a car sold at auction, according to Christie's, is £5.5 million, or almost $11 million. That was paid for a 1931 Bugatti Type 41 Royale Sports Coupe sold by Christie's in 1987.

As for the connection to Hitler, "It's not something people really want to be associated with," Banner said. But the car's value rests on its technological importance, Banner said.

Ian Kelleher, managing director of RM Auctions, a competing auction firm that specializes in classic cars, agreed that the Auto Union D-type is extremely valuable,
but felt that it might not go for as much as Christie's was expecting.

The market for single-seat race cars is simply very limited, Kelleher said.

"You can't drive the Auto Union anywhere but on a track, and it's a lonely way to spend $10 million," he said, referring to the low-end estimates of the car's value.

The D-type will be sold as part of Christie's "Retromobile" auction of antique cars.

Ferdinand Porsche also designed another car for Hitler, but for a very different purpose. That car, inspired by the success of the inexpensive Ford Model T in the United States, ultimately became known as the Volkswagen Beetle. It also had a rear-mounted engine as do today's Porsche sports cars.



source: CNN