SILVER ARROW TYPE-D: HOMECOMING!

Audi Tradition buys back the second Auto Union twin supercharged Type-D Silver Arrow, built in 1939, and then lost in the USSR for many years. Audi now owns three of the original factory racecars.

The Silver Arrow legend was born in the 1930s. In 1934, Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz appeared on the international motor racing scene with German racing cars of totally new design. They had a silver finish and futuristic appearance, and were immediately successful. Whereas Mercedes-Benz relied on conventional front-engined cars, Auto Union placed the engine behind the driver – the layout that is still a standard feature of today’s Formula One cars. The two manufacturers dominated racing on Europe’s Grand Prix circuits without serious opposition until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

The 16-cylinder and 12-cylinder racing cars from Zwickau and Stuttgart captured one title after another, almost as if no other cars were competing. Drivers such as Bernd Rosemeyer, Tazio Nuvolari and Hans Stuck (Auto Union), Rudolf Caracciola, Manfred von Brauchitsch and Hermann Lang (Mercedes-Benz) are still acknowledged as heroes by modern motor sport enthusiasts: they often reached speeds of more than 186 mph in races devoid of any serious safety precautions. On the long straights of the Avus circuit in Berlin in 1937, Rosemeyer’s car was timed at speeds in excess of 236 mph!

With the Second World War came an abrupt end to what had become known as the supercharger era. Mercedes-Benz was able to rescue almost all its Silver Arrow cars after Germany’s total collapse, but fate was less kind to Auto Union. The Soviet Army occupied Zwickau; Auto Union was liquidated and the factories shut down. The Russian occupying forces found the Silver Arrows where they had been stored in a mine building above ground. The cars were carried off to the Soviet Union as part of Germany’s reparation payments, and all trace of them was soon lost in that vast country.