Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Antique Audi D-Type for Auction

. The auction of the silver D-Type from Auto Union will commence on February 17 in Paris as part of Christie's Retromobile auto sale. The auction price for the said vehicle will start at £8 million but expected to go higher than that.According to Christie's International Motor Cars, "This car was really quite ahead of its time. It was revolutionary. It changed the face of racing." Between the year 1933 and 1939 over twenty Auto Union series cars were manufactured. The D-Type that was designed by Ferdinand Porsche has a body shaped that is similar to an airplane fuselage. The driver is positioned in such a way that he is sunken into the body of the metal, and the wheels."While Adolph Hitler gave about 500,000 reichsmarks to Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz to promote racing and technology, the car is not specifically affiliated with the Third Reich." This also explains why the D-Type is painted silver. During the peak of World War II, Auto Union workers concealed the cars in a mine shaft located in eastern Germany to keep them from being used as a scrap metal. After World War II, the Russians discovered the cars and brought them to their own country to recreate motorsports. In short, the cars were taken apart.
According to Thomas Erdmann Audi historian, "There was a kind of memory loss after the war. It took really until the early 1960s and later on to the 1980s for car design to catch up to these cars."
Audi lines of luxury cars are built in plants like Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm, Germany, Bratislava, Slovakia, Gyor, Hungary, and Changchun, China (local market only). Volkswagen is renowned for its top-of-the-line vehicles and auto parts like.

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