This article first appeared in Petrolicious Post 009
“Maybe I'm also one of the mad ones”, Rinaldo ‘Dindo’ Capello laughs as he sits across from Auto Union’s Lucca; a space-age capsule of uncontained power and revolutionary design that has been optimised for one purpose, top speed. Quite fittingly, the three-times Le Mans winner has been the one honoured to drive the Lucca up the Goodwood Hillclimb at this year's Festival of Speed, a celebration of everything ferocious, frenetic and fueled, for its global dynamic debut.
Except this isn’t the first time the Lucca has been seen in public or been driven above the legal limit. Instead, what's on show on the Duke of Richmond’s estate is arguably Audi Tradition’s finest and most ambitious recreation to date.
Before the VW buyout of Audi in 1964 kickstarted the conglomerate it is today, Audi had been one of the four rings of Auto Union; a merger of 4 small struggling manufacturers in the early 1930s. This establishment coincided with Adolf Hitler’s rise as Chancellor where he pushed through Government schemes to support engineering and motorsport development in a wave of nationalistic-aligned policies.
Audi’s historical department are keen not to shy away from its pre-war history and have been restoring and maintaining classics from Audi’s past from daily classics to the Silver Arrow Grand Prix racers. “We’ve been restoring the Grand Prix racers, the Typ C from 1936, the Typ D from 1939 but we had a missing gap in our collection before 1935”, Timo Witt, Project Manager for the Lucca explains.
“When we take on a very special project such as the Lucca, we have to understand that it is not an ordinary project and we have to be calculated with resources”, Timo continues.
It turned out that the Lucca project was particularly challenging for Audi Tradition as the original car no longer existed. This wasn’t going to be a simple restoration. Being on the East side of Germany after World War Two, Auto Union was expropriated by the Soviets with production lines either dismantled or in ruins whilst ex-employees fled to the West. History and heritage was feared to have been lost, the pre-war era, the first golden age of motorsport and competition in Audi’s History reduced to ink on a page. At worst, the original chassis, engine, bodywork were either lost or destroyed or, at best, torn up and reused in later Grand Prix creations. The car had become a myth, a legend, a great tale of Audi’s past. It had been lost to historical records and newspaper clippings. No one had seen the Lucca in over 90 years. The Lucca at Goodwood is not just a recreation, but also a celebration, of a car that up until May this year had no physical form.
“The Lucca not only fills the gap in our collection but also allows us to learn and build our understanding of our products and of our brand”, Timo tells me with passion. This hasn’t been a straightforward project. Audi Tradition commissioned British historical manufacturing experts Crosthwaite & Gardiner to recreate the Lucca from numerous photos and archival documents. The process, taking over 3 years, was meticulously from the ground up.
“There is great emotional value attached to this car”, Timo explains, “It’s a car that is vital to Audi’s history”.
The 1930s were the spacerace for speed and motorsport. Grand Prix victories and speed records were the currency of marketing closely followed by the media and public. In 1934 Auto Union entered its first Grand Prix car, the Typ A, and broke numerous speed records that same year. Germany quickly became a hot-bed for competition, an arms-race for engineering advancements and top speed achievements especially between the big two: Daimler-Benz and Auto Union. In October 1934, Daimler-Benz set a new benchmark and recorded an average speed of 316.6 km/h over a mile from a flying start in a one-off top speed designed car.
“In this period there is almost a monthly back and forth of top speed records being broken between Audi and Mercedes at the time. Like with F1 today, they were a display of technology and engineering that helped to market each company”, Timo adds.
Over the winter months of 1934, the Auto Union engineers took the Typ A through a series of rigorous upgrades. The main advancements were the curved and crafted body work; from the rounded nose and small air intake, to the front wheel covers and the closed cockpit and out towards the longtail-designed rear. It's a tear-drop silver silhouette sculptured by the air flow and models in a wind tunnel. At the time, these were usually reserved for aeronautical testing and development. The fact that racing car aerodynamics had been tested in a wind tunnel was seen as a first at the time in Europe. Auto Union paired the chassis with a bored-out version of the 16-cylinder engine from the Typ A - now at 5 litres and delivering well over 300 horsepower.
By early 1935, the vehicle was ready for shakedown and on 15 February 1935, just outside the town of Lucca in Italy, legendary racer Hans Stuck achieved the flying-start mile record in International Class C at an average speed of 320.267 km/h. The Lucca also reached a top speed over a 1 kilometer stretch of exactly 326.975 km/h to claim the title of “fastest road racing car in the world.” Auto Union became the first manufacturer to break 200mph on a public road.
After the record, the Lucca raced in an open-formula event in Berlin where mechanical issues forced an early retirement. Audi Tradition suspect the car was then broken down and parts reused in later Grand Prix vehicles before the second world war halted all operations. Nonetheless, the feat cannot be underestimated. The Lucca was way ahead of its time; breaking new ground in aerodynamics and pushing the boundaries of what was possible in race car engineering.
“The original pressure and the desire to be better and quicker (in the 1930s) are lessons that can be passed on to the current Audi teams and engineers. We can learn from them and by taking on this project ourselves”, Timo expresses as he walks round the car in the Audi pits. The recreation is as beautiful as it is stunning.
It’s a photographer’s dream. Each panel flows into the next in one cohesive motion, challenging air around the internals. There are lines that wouldn’t look out of place on a modern concept car but close up you can still feel an industrial purposefulness to the nuts and buts nature of the car; air vents are sliced open, rivets are on full show and the panels are far from a pristine show car. Nor should they be, this recreation wasn’t built for a museum.
Timo walks me round the car, “We had good knowledge from the Type A GP Car and used a mixture of drawings and pictures, of course there were some bits where we had to make an estimated guess.”
“Luckily now, we have 3D modelling and CAD which helped us but all the panels were still built by hand”, Timo says. The aim was to be historically accurate but optimized for modern demands. This is the first time the public have seen the recreation after it was revealed in May earlier this year; back in the town of Lucca.
The steel body panels are wafer thin, so much so that the stormtrooper cockpit cover could easily have a second life as a UFO above commuting speed. Clips and straps keep this and the revolutionary mid-placed engine cover secure. The other panels are riveted to the steel space frame chassis whilst an oversized steering wheel dominates the single-man cockpit. The polished dials and exposed gear linkages look like they've been pulled from Horacio Pagani’s top shelf. In all the vehicle weighs around 1000kg. It's a mix of techno-punk aircraft meets batmobile. No wonder no one had seen anything like it in 1935, there still is nothing like it.
At the start of the day at Goodwood, the mid-mounted V16 has to be warmed through. It's a deafening, microphone breaking, organ vibrating cold start. Primal instincts require you to cover your ears. Smoke bellows from the four sky shooting exhausts. It's a dirty, gasping deep roar through the rev range. Crowds gather around the pit entrance, fingers in ears but all in awe at a fire-breathing unicorn. A polite applause ripples round when the procedure is complete. The engine is one component that Timo and his team decided to optimise; the record-breaking car utilised at supercharged 5 litre V16 but in the recreation Audi Tradition fitted the visually indistinguishable 6 liter variant from the later Type C Grand Prix car that sits next to it here at Goodwood. Running a period-correct 50% methanol mix this engine makes over 500hp.
“The Company is very proud of what it achieved at the time and I think the original team would be proud that the Lucca exists again”, Timo continues. “It really is a unique project that can’t be compared to anything else that we have worked on”, he adds.
The PA speakers crackle into life in the Goodwood Paddock. ‘Batch 1 - The Rivals’ are next up the Hill. The car is pushed down into the assembly area, past the other manufacturers, parting the crowd on either side. The marshalls, dressed all in white, direct the traffic. The Lucca is given pole position on the exit of the assembly area; it has to be on flat ground for the starter motor to connect properly.
Driving the car from the assembly arena to the start line will be the first time Dindo has driven the car. Dindo has been an Audi driver since 1994; starting in touring cars to winning Le Mans twice outright with Audi in the early 2000s. Today he is one of the many who remain as brand ambassadors. “I want people to know about Audi’s history in motorsport, but not just in rally… to keep the history and the records alive”, Dindo says.
“For me the cars have to be driven.. Something would be lost in a museum”, Dindo poses for photos in his debatable ‘period-correct’ cap before replacing it with his racing helmet. Dindo isn’t a large man but the serving dish steering wheel still has to be removed before he climbs in. It takes 2 engineers to lock down the close cockpit cover over his head. The external starter motor is connected to the crankshaft nose and the V16 explodes into life again.
I reunite with Dindo and the Audi Tradition Team down in the starting pen. It’s filled with the most legendary Grand Prix and endurance racers: GT40s and Ferrari 330 P4s, Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s, the 1930s Silver Arrows from Mercedes and the Silver Arrows of the Typ D and Typ C from Audi.
“The Festival of Speed is the perfect place to drive this car for the first time. For me a car has to be hot, it has to be alive, to be driven as it was intended when it was built and that was always our aim: to make sure it could be driven”, Timo says. The queue filters down the start line holding pen. There must be 30 classic rival race cars here and around 20 more motorcycles each painting the startline with a different shade of rubber and filling the air with unregulated noise.
“The sound, the speed are so important, it's what makes this place special. It's called the Festival of Speed for a reason”, Timo expresses.
Standing at the second corner, I hear the Lucca before I see it; echoing off the avenue of trees of the start straight. Dindo pilots it round the trick narrow first corners and opens up the throttle under the bridge and out of sight. A concoction of noise, fumes and wonder fill the still air. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”, a voice in the crowd behind me asks.
The Lucca is about as unique and as uncompromised as it gets. No driver aids, drum brakes and mid-engined layout that didn’t find it was to Grand Prix racing until the 50s. “I’m luckily I wasn't born at the time this was racing”, Dindo says in the pits afterwards with a wry smile. “It was like a punishment driving it! Definitely not comfortable.”
The Lucca wasn’t timed up the hill nor did it need to be. It had long run its victory race in the numbers game, instead this was about bringing a spectacle to the world. “I think each car has something different for everyone", Dindo explains. “You feel the passion from the spectators (from inside the cockpit) . I want to give them a show, to show off the noise and what the engine can do.”
It’s easy to see why the Lucca did 200mph over 90 years ago, the engine is almost overpowering. “It’s like an electric car,” Dindo states, “such big torque, it is very fast but in a 1930s chassis you haven't driven before you have to be careful.”
For many at Goodwood last weekend, the Lucca was one of the main attractions. It's rare you get a new car from the 1930s sliding its way up a hillclimb on its public debut but it's rare you find an event as unique as the Festival of Speed.
“The Lucca is beautiful but it has to be driven to be beautiful… it was a dream come true to drive it at Goodwood, I'm so proud of what we have achieved”, Dindo expresses..
As I watch the Lucca being pushed back to the Audi Tradition pits, and swarms of people peering over each other as it rolls within touching distance, I wonder whether we will have the same awe and adulation for the cars that are being built now in 90 years time. We will have the Manufacturer Classic teams recreating the to-be-icons of the current day? We will have Championship-Winning Drivers feeling honoured to have taken it up the Goodwood Hill? Will the Festival of Speed even survive if the sound and the smells no longer do?
The Lucca was a grueling ambitious project for Audi. The Festival of Speed is a huge undertaking for all involved. They are both widely out of touch with a world that is moving rapidly into automation, artificial generation and banality. Where unoriginality rules over creativity and chatbots are fast conquering hard work. The Lucca, like the Festival of Speed was never meant to be easy. These are the occasions to marvel at human achievements gone-by in a modern world where the latest human achievements are becoming less and less tangible.
I fear we’re lurching away from the ‘What ifs?’; What if we put a car in that Aeronautical wind tunnel? What if we aim for 200mph down a public highway? The Festival of Speed is a spectacle first and foremost, a show of the exotic nature that we are all capable of. It’s a love letter in the English countryside to the greatest human feats on wheels, an excuse to celebrate what was and what’s next and for history to have one last say on the future.
“We preserved the Lucca to remind people what we are capable of…”, Timo states.
The Lucca was one of the stars of a show that is only growing; The Festival of Speed will soon arrive stateside. If Audi can take lessons from their history, wider society can take learnings from Goodwood.
“...but I do think we were a little bit mad to build this”, Timo concludes.
The Lucca, like the Festival of Speed, is a loud, beautiful, mad celebration of what’s possible when a community, a collective, pursue the ultimate expression of the passions that drive them. No AI or faked emotion, no manufactured hype or engagement farming. Long may it continue.
