1934-2024 Auto Union Type 52 Schnellsportwagen

Imagined over 90 years ago, now brought to life: Audi Tradition presents the Auto Union Type 52 Everyone knows the Auto Union Silver Arrows, the legendary 1930s Grand Prix race cars. But hardly anyone knows that a street-legal sports car version with a 16-cylinder engine was also planned for these pioneering racing cars: the Auto Union Type 52. Now Audi has built this car, the Schnellsportwagen, and will present it to the public for the first time at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in mid-July. Back to the time when the Auto Union Type 52 was imagined: Auto Union AG, formed in 1932 from the merger of Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer, became a motorsports contender from early on to make its new logo, the four rings, a household name around the world. The same year, the rules were published for the new 750 kg formula used in the Grand Prix held from 1934 to 1936. In 1933, Auto Union AG commissioned the Stuttgart design office of Ferdinand Porsche to develop a race car based on the 750 kg formula. Work on the Auto Union Type A (internally, Porsche called it the Type 22) began in March of 1933. Just one year later, Hans Stuck set a world record driving the car on the AVUS circuit in Berlin. When the innovative Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz race cars burst onto the international racing scene, the legend of the Silver Arrows was born. Swift as an arrow, these legendary powerhouses captivated audiences with their futuristic design and revolutionary technology. While Mercedes-Benz favored front-mounted engines, Auto Union was the first to place the engine behind the driver. This mid-engine layout remains the standard in Formula One today. In the years that followed, Auto Union set several world records, winning numerous hill climbs, three German championships, and the European championship in 1936 with the advanced Auto Union Type C. And the rest is history... Or maybe not quite, as one part of the story has yet to be told. Few people know that while the Grand Prix race cars were being developed, Auto Union AG and the Ferdinand Porsche design office also planned a street-legal sports sedan. The concept papers called the vehicle “Schnellsportwagen”, apparently its intended marketing name. Today, with its distinctive characteristics, the car most closely resembles a classic Gran Turismo. The Auto Union Type 52, as the project came to be known, was intended to be sold to customers for driving in long-distance races such as the Mille Miglia or in sports car competitions such as the endurance races at Spa-Francorchamps or Le Mans. There was also talk of the car being a factory race car. As early as the end of 1933, the Porsche design office drew up the first design sketches, which took on a more concrete form in 1934. The project managers decided to build a test car – but as far as we know today, it never materialized. The project was abandoned in 1935, and its trail lost in the archives of Audi and Porsche. But the developers left much groundbreaking work on paper. It was based on the technology of the Grand Prix race car that was developed at the same time: The chassis from the Auto Union Type 52 was designed as a ladder frame with a mid-mounted engine. The drivetrain of the Auto Union Type 22 was used, but the compression of the powerful 16-cylinder engine was reduced to allow the car to run on regular gasoline. At the same time, the engineers reduced the gear ratio of the Roots supercharger. The Auto Union Type 52’s engine was to draw around 200 PS from 4.4 liters of displacement at 3,650 rpm. Its maximum torque of 4,450 kgf-cm (436 Nm) was achieved at a moderate 2,2350 rpm. Compared to the Grand Prix legend, this was a reduction in output, but the excellent performance of around 200 km/h, as calculated by the engineers, shows that the Schnellsportwagen would have lived up to its name. In its day, it would have been one of the most powerful street-legal vehicles on the road and in sports car competitions – a true “Schnellsportwagen”.