Audi Auto Union Type 52 '24
To be sold in Brand Central.
#Road Car, #Concept Car
"Audi resurrected both the Auto Union name and a road-going pre-war Grand Prix racer that never materialized until at least 90 years from its stillbirth."
In 1934, Ferdinand Porsche drew up sketches and blueprints for what would have been the ideal road-going Grand Prix racer under what was once Audi in its youthful form, Auto Union, which may explain the "four rings" - Horch, DKW, Wanderer and Audi themselves.
Being a fearsome name to reckon with in pre-war Grand Prix racing, this project was called the "Type 52", and would have been a road-going counterpart to their "Type 22" race car and would feature a 4.4-litre V-16 engine with roughly 200 horsepower, making it a hypercar for its time.
But the pure ambition of the project, which was far too great, led to the project's termination in 1935, and this wasn't helped by the onset of World War II, which meant that this car would remain nothing more as sketches and blueprints that have been lost to time, until 90 years later, in 2024, when Audi decided to resurrect this concept car and bring it to life as a modern, yet vintage machine. As such, this model was restricted as a one-off with no further production in mind.
Because of the original idea was to make this the fastest road-going car in the world at the time, it was given the nickname of "Schnellsportwagen" ("fast sports car" in German), and by 2023, the car had been completed by Audi's "Tradition" department of special vehicles, where everything about this car was recreated entirely from scratch, although some original documented details could not be retrieved as the Auto Union had dissolved following Germany's Russian occupation some time after World War II ended, and many race cars and memorabilia had vanished since then.
Instead of the originally planned 4.4-litre V-16, in order to match today's standards of high performance, it was given a 6.0-litre supercharged V-16 engine from the iconic Type C with 520 horsepower and features a curb weight of around 1,450kg without any luggage. To keep up with the theme of the Silver Arrows, this car was painted in a special paint known as "Cellulose Silver".
It was unveiled at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed and was driven by Audi's most famous drivers such as Hans-Joachim Stuck and Mr. Le Mans himself, Tom Kristensen, to the astonishment of many. Bringing a 90-year old stillborn car to life in the modern day was no easy feat, but only Audi could pull this off quite well.
As pre-war Grand Prix racing was considered to be a precursor to modern Formula One, this would have been the first idea of a road-going equivalent before the Ferrari F50 and Mercedes-AMG One.
