The Fast And The Führer

The Fast And The Führer - The Auto Union D-type racer is one of the rarest vintage cars in the world - and one of Adolf Hitler's favourites.

Driven by the Führer’s friend Hans Stuck in the 1939 Grand Prix racing season, it is one of only three D-types known to exist – and was lost behind the Iron Curtain for 50 years.

Hitler was obsessed with motor racing as proof of German technological superiority and the Silver Arrows – as the Mercedes and Auto Union teams were known – utterly dominated the sport in the Thirties.

When the Red Army overran Berlin at the end of the war, all Silver Arrows cars were immediately shipped back to the NAMI motor research institute in Moscow to be reverse-engineered.

Nobody knew this chassis – number 19 – had survived, until American car enthusiast Paul Karassik tracked it down, adding an original engine from a separate D-type carcass and handing it over to British Silver Arrow specialists Crosthwaite and Gardiner to restore to its original form.

The Fast And The Führer - Now you can own it but, at £5.5 million you’ll be facing stiff Russian opposition...

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