DKW Auto-Union Project: Visions of a ghost

In early-1938, the governments of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany announced a road endurance race would be held between Berlin and Rome in September of that year. With only short notice, automakers in Germany and Italy scrambled to put together suitable vehicles. Auto Union intended to field vehicles from three its four brands - Audi, Wanderer and DKW. Streamlined aluminum-bodied Wanderer cabriolets had raced in the 1936 and 1937 Liege-Rome-Liege races, although their performance was not particularly impressive. For the Berlin-Rome race, each of the three brands constructed a streamlined coupe body, based on the same design. Two Wanderers and two Audis were built but by the time the race was scheduled in September, but performance issues with all their cars led them to be withdrawn from the competition.

DKW set aside six pre-production DKW F8 chassis for the competition. Three were fitted with the coupe body and began road testing. However, before the race could be held the Czechoslovakian crisis erupted and Europe jumped to war footing and the race was cancelled. Unconcerned with the politics, Auto Union's race team breathed a sigh of relief - the delay of a year would allow them to refine their racers and address the many faults that had been identified.

The Wanderer and Audi racers would undergo comprehensive rebuilds to address multiple problems with their engines, superchargers and suspension. The DKW racers with their new F8 trapezoidal chassis, handled well from the outset, but their standard 18HP twin-cylinder two-stroke engines were under-powered, giving the cars an average top speed of only around 90 kilometers per hour, although as two-strokes they could consistently maintain these maximum speeds for extended periods. The DKW race team began experimenting with different engines. Race tuned 700cc twins were trialed, along with different carburetors and aluminum high-compression heads. These minor changes managed to squeeze an extra horsepower or two from the engines. DKW also began to experiment with exhaust back-flow tuning, which improved combustion efficiency. These experiments would later be put to good use in the F9 and its post-war successor vehicles.

Other engines were also trialed, including the troublesome V4 engine used in the earlier Schwebeklasse model and, it is believed, a version of the 900cc triple that was being worked up for the F9, although this likely occurred later outside the race preparation timeline. Most interestingly, a pure race engine developed for sidecar competition was trialed in the DKW coupes. These unique engines were based on the 700cc water-cooled twin but with twin charge pumps set at 90 degrees to the piston block. Like the V4 charging pump engine, the charging pumps compressed the fuel-oil mixture and forced it into the combustion chamber, like a supercharger.

This design was similar to the 'singing chainsaw' 500cc motorcycle engines used by DKW to set motorcycle speed records. Just as the singing chainsaw emitted an earsplitting howl on the motorcycle circuit, the sidecar engine generated a deafening 115 decibels inside the cramped aluminum cabin of the coupe. Lack of intake dampening and exhaust silencers required the the driver and co-driver to wear earplugs and communication was only possible via hand signals.

The DKW endurance coupes were tested on the Avus track in Berlin and on timed autobahn runs in early 1939. The DKWs top performance was 115 kilometres per hour on a two hour endurance run, with an average speed of 105 kilometres per hour. For Auto Union it seemed as though they were in a good position to claim a swag of awards in the planned 1939 Berlin-Rome race, but unfortunately the Polish crisis erupted at the end of August and on 3 September 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany. The race was postponed again.

Auto Union director Richard Bruhn and managing director of technical development, William Werner, secured military contracts for Auto Union in 1940 and the company began a rearrangement of its facilities to meet the demands of the war effort. Audi and Wanderer shut down all passenger car development and began manufacturing trucks. The works race department was also closed down and all competition vehicles were moved into storage. There were some 40 odd vehicles in the works collection at this time, including several more DKW coupes which had been built for trials in 1939. With storage at a premium, the works department hurriedly sold off the collection, selling all the DKWs coupes except one. The two Audis and two Wanderers were preserved. All would be destroyed in the war.

The DKW coupes that were sold were stripped of their racing engines and fitted with a standard 700cc twin engine. All the cars were snapped up extremely quickly. One was purchased by the owner of a DKW agency in Bavaria, who proudly posed with his car for a publicity photo.

In edition 14 of the 1953 AUTO MOTOR und SPORT Magazine, Richard von Frankenberg reported stumbling across one of the DKW coupes in Switzerland. (pg 514-15)

"In the last few months I have been to Switzerland several times - no, unfortunately not to Arosa or St. Moritz, but to Zurich and Bad Schinznach on business. Such trips are actually quite boring because the car and the road on which you move are always just a means to an end. You eat up the kilometers, gradually you know the route exactly, and no one can choose the weather either. he has a specific appointment ahead of him. And yet: there are side glances that shouldn't be missed... will I be allowed to report on them?

The first sideways glance I took was when we weren't even in Switzerland yet, but in a small village just before Ravensburg. l must say in advance that I still had work to do in Friedrichshafen and Lindau, and this time I didn't take the usual route to Switzerland, but "down around" via Bregenz, a route that is above average pretty when the sun is shining, but all the more dreary, when it rains. That day it was raining heavily.

It was raining heavily that day.

Actually, I just wanted to get some sleep and let a good friend of mine accompany me take the wheel. Then, as I said, we came to the village whose name I have already forgotten, and suddenly I screamed at the top of my lungs: “Stop!”, so that my companion slammed on the brakes, completely taken aback. "Did you see the car on the left in the driveway?" I asked as we stopped. "Back up quickly!" - My companion shook his head: "What kind of car?" - "Well, the streamlined car!"

We maneuvered ourselves backwards about thirty meters to the spot in question. There was a garden entrance between two houses on the left, and the car that I had noticed for a few tenths of a second as it drove past was standing there, with its rear facing the street. "Oh," said my companion, "an old Austrian Porsche with a light alloy body, eh?" We got out and he immediately had to correct himself. A forerunner of the Porsche? No, not either. The thing obviously had the engine at the front. Now we were standing in front of it. My memory didn't deceive me. It was the special car developed by Auto Union in 1939 for the Berlin-Rome international long-distance journey that was planned at the time.

This long-distance race never took place because instead of the competition there was war. But since the first stage from Berlin to Munich was supposed to take place on the motorway, this competition left the design offices with very fruitful development work. Especially in the field of vehicle aerodynamics. The 'car with the four rings from Auto Union' that stood in front of us was supposed to be equipped with a 1000 cc. DKW engine which was designed to produce approx. 55 hp with the help of a charge pump. This means that the vehicle with the streamlined body would have achieved a top speed of more than 150 kmph. However, this special engine was not initially installed, but a small 700 DKW with around 22 horses, and two such bodies were completed at the start of the war and equipped with the 700 engine. When there was no longer any talk of Berlin-Rome, the two streamliners were sold. In 1940 I was offered one for 5,400 Reichsmarks, but since I knew that my days at college were numbered, I didn't buy the streamliner (besides, I would never have gotten much change from "such a crazy car").

I thought about this story. My sideways glance had been very expert, I thought. And as we stood in front of the car taking photos, the current owner came out. Then I learned a bit of post-war history about this classic piece. From 1945 to 1947, none other than Prince Bernadotte of Sweden - who, as is well known, lived on the island of Mainau - drove it. Bernadotte is a lover of fast and interesting cars, and I can understand why he owned this little car.

Yes, said the owner of the car, he got it from Bernadotte, but a two-seater sports car was too uncomfortable for him in the long run and he was now selling it again to a young lady in Weingarten who loves sportscars. It still goes 110-115 kph and still has the original 80-liter tank in the rear. The body, of course, no longer looks exactly new. It's understandable that the light aluminum skin gradually tears, and so you could see a lot of patches and not much of the original paint was actually left."

In 1953 Hans Fromke of Berlin-Lichterfelde sent two photos to Auto Motor und Sport magazine of one of the DKW streamlined coupes parked in a street in Berlin.

"By chance I came across the attached photos that I took in Berlin in September 1953. Is this the sports car developed by Auto Union in 1939 for the Berlin-Rome long-distance journey that was planned at the time? Almost the same car appears in AUTO MOTOR und SPORT, issue 14/1953. Hans Fromke in Berlin-Lichterfelde."

"There is a great deal to be said about the second surviving example of the Berlin-Rome car from Auto Union, a 700 DKW special with a light metal body. Editors Auto Motor und Sport."

All trace of these DKW coupes has subsequently disappeared. A chassis of one was discovered in Austria in the 1990s. The owner had purchased the F8 with a rotten custom wooden body. When the owner queried the vehicle with Audi Tradition, they confirmed the chassis belonged to one of the coupes. The fact that the car had been rebodied at some stage with a wooden body suggests that the coupes' aluminum body was rather flimsy, something that is suggested by the photo of the Bernadotte car, which looks particularly shabby after less than 10 years. Some race engine parts have also been found.