Remember the restored race car orig. found folded in half & buried on a farm?

id be intereseted in some pics to... if you have em...

keith

 

I have put up pictures of it before. Not much has changed on it in the year since I took the picture though. Ha ha Ha

It is a 60 Impala.

The ferrari might be a P3, I can't remember. Like you, I am more interested in the Impala. He did a high end Stude truck too, but I would rather see the Impala get finished. He has been working on it for 10 years.

 

Most of the pics in your earlier posts are gone.

Can you post more pics?


.

 

Who knows...

Here are some Pics of Arthur Mallock working on my Mk6.

He identified it as one of his.

Thats good enough for me...

 

Here's an article I found searching on Google about some Auto Union cars:

Car and Driver, March 2001
BY DON SHERMAN
n a dreary night shortly after World War II ended, a freight train rumbled
through a darkened station in Zwickau, Saxony, en route to Moscow a
thousand
miles to the east. Once the pride of Germany's industrial might, the region

bordering Czechoslovakia and Poland lay in ruin and at the mercy of the
occupying Soviet forces.
Those Red Army troops were ordered to seize everything of value in Saxony
as
war reparations. What was left of factories that manufactured Audi, DKW,
Horch, and Wanderer automobiles, then Wehrmacht vehicles, was uprooted and
carted off by the Soviets. Buildings were stripped of windows, doors, and
light switches. Some 28,000 machine tools were scavenged. But one or two
rail cars contained plunder of inestimable value: 18 of the most advanced
race cars ever constructed for Grand Prix, mountain-climb, and speed-record

competitions.

During Grand Prix racing's 1934-39 "Age of Titans," Auto Union battled
arch-rival Mercedes-Benz, and lesser foes such as Scuderia Ferrari, Alfa
Romeo, and Delahaye, at dozens of venues across Europe and North Africa.
The
two Reich-supported German teams flung their silver arrows into the record
books like Zeus and Jupiter in a Wagnerian game of darts. If any six-year
span in motorsports deserves the appellation "epic," it is this one. The
cars were engineered by the era's brightest minds and driven by men with
heroic combinations of courage and cunning. (See "Auto Union Registry"
sidebar.)
Mercedes' heritage -- its archives and the most significant silver-starred
racers -- was preserved by the luck of the Yalta Plan, which drew new
borders that put Stuttgart in the Allied Zone. Auto Union was less
fortunate. Almost all its assets were located in what became the eastern
occupation zone. What war's fury didn't destroy fell into Soviet hands. The

coup de grace came in 1948 when the Soviet Military Administration removed
the Auto Union name from the German trade register.

For decades, Auto Union partisans had little tangible evidence that the
mighty mid-engined machines ever roamed European tracks. The truly faithful

clung to the hope that team cars might still exist in the U.S.S.R. Doug
Nye,
a noted racing journalist and Auto Union enthusiast, diligently
investigated
survivor rumors until he found credible evidence that such hearsay could be

true. One Soviet engineer he located recalled, "I was in the first team to
reach Chemnitz [site of Auto Union's headquarters] and Zwickau. We found
the
cars' hiding places at a nearby mine. Our orders were to return them to
Moscow for investigation of design and technology. We shipped them packed
into rail cars like sardines." Upon arrival in Moscow, the cars were
distributed to engine makers and technical centers in hopes of improving
the
crude state of the U.S.S.R.'s motor-vehicle industry. Auto Union's
brilliant
chief engineer, Robert Eberan von Eberhorst, was offered employment to
nurture a planned Soviet motorsports program, but he declined.
For more than two decades, Auto Union fortunes suffered. The worst fear was

that the Soviets had grown weary of the technically interesting toys and
discarded them as useless artifacts. Several cars probably were destroyed.
Then, suddenly, in the early 1970s, one Auto Union race car surfaced in
Prague, Czechoslovakia, initiating the most remarkable renaissance in
motorsports history. A retired Czech race driver named Pohl sold the 1938
V-12 D-type he held to Hubertus Count Donhoff, a prominent German who had
hopes of presenting the car as a museum centerpiece. The major surprise was

that the car was not one of the 18 team cars packed into rail cars by
Soviet
troops. Rather, it turned out to be a promotional car built by the factory
for use at dealerships. Since it was never bound for a racetrack, this
car's
driveline was assembled with engine and gearbox cases empty of their
internal parts.
Donhoff mounted a search for the missing components and even approached
Porsche Engineering for assistance. Following three years of fruitless
effort, he relinquished his dream of owning a fire-breathing Auto Union and

sought a buyer.
Enter Kerry Payne, a wealthy California entrepreneur with a fascination for

early single-seat race cars. "One day," Payne recalled, "a broker called me

to say he had something really interesting -- a prewar Auto Union race car.

I was skeptical but he was persistent. After endless beating around the
bush, he agreed to show me the car in West Germany.

"The car looked legitimate and documents were produced to help convince me
it wasn't stolen, but I soon discovered that the engine and gearbox were
empty shells. The seller characterized that detail as a 'linguistic
misunderstanding.' Eventually, he admitted he had lost heart in the
project.
When he begged me to take a white elephant off his hands, I trusted him and

bought the car.
"I shipped the Auto Union back to England, took it apart to find out
exactly
what was missing, and started sleuthing all over East Germany, offering
rewards for information. Finally, a guy showed me pictures of a
dual-supercharged Auto Union V-12 engine stored in a barn.

"The problem was getting that treasure across the border. I was told that
the Communist government doesn't worry about privately held merchandise
until a value is attached. But if a sale or exchange transpires, the seller

can wind up in a lot of trouble.
"After pondering that situation for a while, I asked authorities if it
would
be possible to bring something into the country, then back out again. The
answer was yes, as long as there's justification and the material is
stamped
and registered. So I returned to England, filled my hollow engine and
gearbox with heavy tractor parts, and matched the two engines' external
appearance using photos of the East German engine as my guide." Payne was
about to perpetrate a grand shell game: his static display engine in
exchange for a complete V-12.

"Border guards were told that my engine was going to a technical institute
in Leipzig for analysis. The person who had its replacement was, in fact,
employed there. A few well-placed bribes helped smooth the transactions.
"Once the swapped engine was extracted, transported to Colin Crabbe's shop
in England, and dismantled, it proved to be a fantastic piece of
engineering
-- full of thousands of needle bearings. I had it reassembled and adapted a

Hewland transaxle in place of the missing gearbox." Payne's
not-so-plausible
cover story was that the Auto Union team had left this engine under a bench

in England after a race at Donington in the fall of 1938.

In 1979, Payne extended an offer to Phil Hill to drive the car for a Road
&Track salon. In the January 1980 feature that followed, Hill was suitably
impressed by the D-type's power and handling prowess. But he neglected to
share all of his experience. There was no mention of the broken connecting
rod that ventilated the Auto Union's cylinder block. Payne blamed neither
Hill nor Crabbe, who built the engine, but the thrown rod was the last
straw
for Payne. He sold his Auto Union and continued chasing various rumors he
had gathered during sleuthing missions inside the Soviet Union.
Payne recalled, "While tracking down gearboxes, I saw photos of cars under
tarps in junkyards and heard rumors that a streamliner still existed. After

locating two gearboxes, extracting them required more than a year and the
assistance of a Frenchman with a Latvian wife.
"Margus-Hans Kuuse, a helpful Estonian journalist, and I traveled to Latvia

to inspect a V-16 car that was offered in exchange for my building them a
museum. I said never mind to that deal, but the trail did lead to two more
D-type cars inside the Soviet Union."
Payne was nearly double-crossed by the D-type transaction. "I shook hands
to
buy both cars but found out from the low-level KGB agent posing as my
Intourist guide that the seller had no intention of delivering them because

he was also dealing with other bidders."

The competing bidders were Paul and Barbara Karassik, two European-born
Floridians, who succeeded in recovering two nearly complete D-type machines

after a quest that lasted more than a decade. The Karassiks, however, won't

talk for publication about the intrigue they experienced, preferring to
save
their tale for a book.
Decades earlier, Paul Karassik had witnessed Tazio Nuvolari win the 1939
Yugoslav Grand Prix in what may have been an Auto Union D-type that he
would
later rescue piece by piece. The key to the Karassiks' success was their
fluency in both Russian and German. In addition, they had the means to tour

the globe in pursuit of lost racers and to pay handsomely for each shred of

information, thanks to their prosperous monument-stone and real-estate
businesses. They were also very lucky. Payne obligingly sold the Karassiks
one of the gearboxes he had recovered from Latvia.

Phase three of Auto Union's renaissance began with a 1976 distress call to
Viktors Kulbergs, president of an antique automobile club in Riga, Latvia.
In two weeks, a 16-cylinder Auto Union racer located at the ZIL motorworks
was scheduled for destruction as part of a grand work-place cleanup
campaign
in celebration of Lenin's birthday. Kulbergs hurried to Moscow, secured the

"resolutions" necessary to transfer possession of the car to his club, and
commandeered an empty cargo truck destined for Riga. The priceless heirloom

was rescued from the scrapper in the nick of time.
In due course, Kulbergs reinstalled the supercharger that had been removed
from the V-16, tracked down the huge side-draft Solex carburetor from a
Russian who had "borrowed" it for use on his race car, and founded the Riga

Motormuseum in 1989 to showcase this prize. After a superficial restoration

and some engine work, this car ran briefly on at least two occasions.

Later investigation revealed that the Riga V-16 -- the very car that was
offered to Payne -- was something of a C- and D-type hybrid. The 6.0-liter
C-type engine wore a 1936 date stamp, the gearbox carried 1938
identification, and the nose shape was D-type. Driver Hans Stuck probably
piloted this short-wheelbase, dual-rear-tire machine to his fourth Deutsche

Bergmeister ("German hill-climb master") championship in 1938. Hermann P.
Muller drove the car in 1939. For the final mountain climb before the war,
Muller benefited from two significant updates -- a D-type de Dion rear axle

and four-leading-shoe brakes. This car was a monumental find -- the only
complete and original V-16 Auto Union with a competition pedigree -- and it

would soon serve a crucial Rosetta-stone role in the unfolding renaissance
pageant.
After watching quietly from the sidelines while privateers facilitated the
westward movement of found Auto Union treasures, Audi finally entered the
picture in 1995. Audi acquired the Riga V-16 mountain climber in exchange
for an exact clone of this original and an undisclosed amount of money. Not

coincidentally, Kulbergs later became the Latvian importer for Audi
automobiles.
To refurbish the original and create the clone, Audi delivered the V-16
Auto
Union to the Crosthwaite & Gardiner (C&G) shops at Hogge Farm near the
village of Buxted in East Sussex, England. During the second half of the
16th century, Ralph Hogge supplied cast-iron cannons and ammunition to the
British Crown from this location. Dick Crosthwaite and John Gardiner joined

forces in 1966 and located their race-car engineering operations at Hogge
Farm in 1969. C&G's list of accomplishments includes nine Le Mans campaigns

for drivers Alain de Cadenet and Chris Craft, repair of the broken Kerry
Payne Auto Union in the early 1980s, and construction of two complete Auto
Union D-type racers out of the baskets of parts the Karassiks extracted
from
Russia. Audi became familiar with the scope and quality of C&G's work while

witnessing demonstration runs of the two D-types at a 1994 Nurburgring
historic event. That contact set wheels in motion. The following year Audi
shipped its V-16 to C&G for restoration and duplication. After six years of

negotiation, Audi was finally able to purchase the Karassiks' 1938 D-type
in
1996.
In spite of years of mishandling and neglect, Audi's V-16 racer was in
reasonable shape. The list of broken or corroded parts included cylinder
liners, the large magnesium oil sump, and the magnesium brake backing
plates. The supercharger's oil-metering unit was missing, the camshaft was
scored, and the carburetor body was cracked. Once the car had been
completely dismantled, C&G worked with its pattern makers and foundry
subcontractors to create the new magnesium and aluminum castings needed for

the original and its clone.

One large room at C&G that once housed cattle stalls now contains 50 or
more
machine tools ranging from World War II lend-lease mills to the latest
computer-controlled machining centers. Gardiner is especially proud of his
homemade cam grinder. A wide assortment of lathes, gear cutters, borers,
broaches, and shapers gives C&G the ability to handle the most challenging
machining operations in-house. There are two dynamometers in the engine
test
cell, but neither has the capacity to handle the V-16's ferocious 630
pound-feet of torque developed at only 2500 rpm.
The task of repairing the dented and Bondo-filled aluminum bodywork and
creating an accurate duplicate shell was assigned to Keith Roach
Manufacturing, another modest-appearing fabrication shop located 90 miles
to
the west near Southampton. Roach lives in a 16th-century cottage on
premises
where the garage space is several times larger than the living quarters.
Gary Yates is Roach's resident master metal artist.

Yates apprenticed in railway repair shops and moved on to aerospace work
before joining the Roach works 13 years ago. Although he modestly describes

his craft as "shape work," he's truly a Michelangelo of metal benders.
Yates
passes an 18-gauge (0.04-inch thick) sheet of annealed aircraft aluminum
through an English wheel -- a pair of hardened steel rollers supported by a

large rigid frame -- to create the compound curves needed to skin a race
car. In essence, each two-dimensional sheet is converted to a
three-dimensional shape by stretching inner areas of the panel while the
edges remain untouched. It takes a degree of hand and eye coordination
found
in few mortals. After the panels are joined with oxyacetylene welds,
Yates's
sculpture is as smooth and perfect as polished marble.
"We stripped the V-16 car down to the last rivet," recalled Yates. "Once
you
take something apart, you get a feel for the details and the frame of mind
of the original craftsmen. It was a real blessing to have that car and a
better starting point than working from period photographs. I made patterns

from the original panels to duplicate them for the museum's clone. The
original panels were then straightened and restored for reuse on Audi's
car."
While Yates crafted the two bodies, two-dozen artisans at C&G built up a
pair of engines, restored the original chassis, and fabricated a second
frame and all the running gear needed for the clone to be returned to
Latvia. In just over two years, both of these monumental jobs were
complete.
Hans Stuck Jr. wowed vintage fans with several demonstration runs in the
Audi-owned original at the 1997 Goodwood Festival of Speed hill-climb
event.
Later that year, the clone circulated a track in Latvia as part of its
ceremonial return to the Riga Motormuseum.
This was merely the beginning of the third and most fruitful phase of the
Auto Union renaissance, which is still under way. Impressed by the combined

C&G and Keith Roach effort, Audi wrote a check to carry on the continuation

process with the aim of stocking its heritage collection with truly
impressive hardware. In addition to the restored D-type Grand Prix racer
and
C- and D-type mountain climber, the boys from Britain were commissioned to
construct two running C-type GP cars (one destined for VW's museum in
Wolfsburg, Germany) and a fully functional replica of the streamliner that
Bernd Rosemeyer drove to record speeds of more than 250 mph in 1937.

In 1999 Audi's Belgian importer, S.A. D'Ieteren N.V., raised its hand to
join the fun. D'Ieteren sought its own continuation Auto Union for
publicity
purposes and gallery display. (In business since 1805, D'Ieteren has
manufactured everything from horse-drawn carriages to Studebakers and has a

collection of 170 historic automobiles.) Audi gave the D'Ieteren
organization its blessing with a couple of provisos attached. Their car had

to be built by C&G and be available to Audi Tradition for occasional
exhibitions and demonstrations. But the most interesting stipulation was
which Auto Union. To maximize the scope of the newly reconstituted fleet of

prewar racers, Audi urged D'Ieteren to commission a replica of the first
series of Auto Unions, designated the A-type, that competed in nine 1934 GP

events. Using period photos of Hans Stuck's French Grand Prix machine as
his
guide, Yates began crafting body panels in the fall of 1999.
When the A-type is completed this spring, it will serve as the alpha of the

collection -- the machine with which professor Porsche commenced the Age of

Titans. That makes the streamliner the omega of this resurrection, although

strictly speaking, it was the penultimate Auto Union. Yates characterized
the streamliner project: "[It's] like building an aircraft. Huge skin
panels
are riveted to an internal framework of support panels. I started with
full-size patterns drawn by hand. Then we made a wooden buck with
transverse
sections spaced every 200 millimeters [8 inches] at the ends and 400
millimeters [16 inches] through the middle. To learn how the internal
supports and ducts were made, I actually studied photos of the aftermath of

Rosemeyer's fatal crash. The panels had to be worked very carefully to get
the light lines exactly right. Start to finish, the streamliner body
required nine months of effort."

Yates's panels flow like quicksilver. Audi's legacy, lost for decades, now
shines brightly in the expertly crafted light lines of a job well done.

 

If you know where and how to dig you can get history. I had a client that had serious interest in a Packard dual cowl phaeton. It was a very rare one of 3 1935 v-12. I didn't like something about the car. Although it was stunning in appearence and finish, I had a wild hair up my ass to truely qualify this car. The price was about 100K short in my estimation of value and the seller allowed me some liberty looking for true body numbers and other signs of what I suspected.


The car was indeed all Packard. The Dietrich body # was in the right place. Stamped in the wood in front of the passenger seat, very close to the cowl. The brass body tag was not under the driver's seat as the earlier cars were, but could be dismissed as the 12th series cars were considered "works" or Packard bodies of Dietrich decent. One evening over a 1/2 a pot of coffee I found what I was seeking. Seems the guy who owned the car the longest registered the thing with the AACA and CCCA...but DECADES earlier! Stories floated around of how the few true 12s were destroyed during the scrap campaigns of wwII. The Dietrich body #s were registered to a Super 8 model. While both of the clubs recognize the car as a "true" Packard due to it's genuine coachwork on a genuine chassis, I didn't feel that the car was as legit as it was being presented. We passed, and I did pass my findings along to the seller. That was over 10yrs ago. Who knows where the car is now but still whoever owns it has a fine piece of classic machinery.

Here's a "barn find" from that same period...

 

the auto union article was incredible!

so, since we are talking about them, any one know what happened with the "A" type that showed up in scotland a while back...or was it a "P" type, dont recall sorry...

 

Some of this sounds like what's fairly typical in restoring late 50's ragtops. The '58 DeSoto we found last fall is in Sweden, where somehow the guy came up with a solid '57 DeSoto 2-door hardtop, missing some parts. He paid me $3500 for this thing and basically used it for parts and a VIN and cowl (actually on the radiator support) tag.

Because when you take a car apart, the parts are all more or less the same. It's just a matter of which parts you put back together when you're done. I don't know how this DeSoto stayed in one piece for us, but it did. Funny thing is it had never gone very far, I think we got it maybe 50 miles from the dealer who sold it (decal was still on the trunk). Now it's half a planet away.

So when you get a ragtop that has a badly rotted frame, no rockers, no floors, bad quarters, etc. and need to replace it all, and it's not reproduced, there really is no other way to do it unless you fabricate it from scratch. Cut the top and cowl off the hardtop, add the X-brace to the frame, put the convert cowl on, take the quarters off and swap in the wheel houses and top supports, and put it all back together.

Trouble is not everyone considers that a restoration, and some will argue all day that it's a bastardization. I don't have a problem with it but I think that a seller should make a buyer aware of how it was restored before selling. I would think in the case of something like a '57 Chevy or '58 Plymouth, it won't hurt the value much. Guys want them bad enough to go to this trouble to build it, guys will want it bad enough not to care if it has pieces of 5 cars in reconstructing it.

 

A good friend, John Lothrop (recently deceased) was a model maker for Polaroid and had a passion with the impossible.
Possibly his most famous creation was a 1911 Corbin (similar to a Stutz Bearcat) that he got with just a frame and block. He made everything else including heads, crank, pistons, etc. and he did it at home. He even restored machine tools from the same era to restore his cars. His Bridgeport lathe was an 1896 model! He cast his own aluminum and brass.

The Corbin was fully accepted as a restoration and not a recreation.

 

There can't be too many Corbins around, I wonder if the one John Lothrop restored is the yellow one I saw back in the 1970's? Years ago I looked at the remains of a 1907 Autocar, very sad, you really had to be into cars to know that that pile was once an automobile. I passed on the deal, but John Lothrop had it up and running 2 years later.

 

Very interesting thread, i'm a really big fan of the Auto Union cars, they were amazing. Here's an interesting 1:8th scale model build of an Auto Union. It's a good insight into the construction of the real car.

 

The following is from Dennis Jenkinson's “Directory of Historic Racing Cars.”
It was written about race cars in particular (and references many cars that some here may not be familiar with) but can certainly be applied universally as cars go...

Original

Almost impossible to find anything in this category. It would have to have been put in store the moment it was completed. Possibly the Trossi-Monaco special in the Biscaretti Museum comes as close to an original racing car as it is possible to get.
The “old-car” industry frequently uses degrees of originality, such as “nearly original”, “almost original”, even “completely original”, but all such descriptions are meaningless as they cannot be quantified. A racing car that has only had a new set of tyres and a change of sparking plugs since it was completed is no longer “original”. Many components have remained “original”, such as gearboxes, cylinder heads, axles and so on, and reproduction parts are made to “original drawings” and “original material specification”, but this does not make them “original” parts, nor does a complete car built from such components qualify as “original”, regardless of what the constructor or owner might think. Such a car is nothing more than a “reproduction” or “facsimile”.

Genuine

This is a much more practical description for an old or historic car and can be applied to most racing cars that have had active and continuous lives, with no occasions when they “disappeared into limbo” or changed their character in any way. Most E.R.A.s come into this category as they have been raced continuously, which has meant the replacing of numerous components as they wore out, but the car itself has never been lost from view, nor has its basic character and purpose been altered over the years. Even such a well-known E.R.A. as “Romulus” is not “original”, as it has been repainted, reupholstered, new tyres have been fitted and new components have been used to rebuild the engine; but it is unquestionably “Genuine”.

Authentic

This term is used to describe a racing car that has led a chequered career, through no fault of its own, but has never disappeared from view. The “Entity”, which is best described as the sum of the parts, has always been around in some form or other, but has now been put back to the specification that it was in, either when it was first built, or some subsequent known point in its history. An example would be an old Grand Prix car that was converted into a road-going sports car when its useful racing life was over, over the years having the racing engine replaced by a touring version, and eventually being allowed to deteriorate. It is then rescued and rebuilt as the Grand Prix car, with its racing engine replaced, but with new radiator, fuel tank and oil tank, new wheels made, new bodywork, instrument panel, seat, upholstery and so on, all of which were missing. The “Entity” that started life as the Grand Prix car never actually disappeared, so the end result of all the labours can justifiably be described as “Authentic”. There is no question of it being “Original”, and to describe it as genuine would be unfair to its sister cars that remained Grand Prix cars all their lives, even though such things as radiator, fuel tank, seat and so on had to be replaced due to the ravages of time and use.

Resurrection

Some racing cars, when they reached the end of their useful life, were abandoned and gradually dismantled as useful bits were taken off to use on other cars. Eventually insufficient of the car remained to form an acceptable entity, even though most of the components were still scattered about. There have been numerous cases where such components that still existed were gathered up to form the basis of a new car; a new chassis frame and new body were required and, from the bare bones of the ashes or the original, another one appears. It cannot claim to be the original car, and certainly not a genuine car, nor an authentic car. At best it is a “Resurrection” from the dead, or from the graveyard.


Re-construction

This can stem from a single original component, or a collection of components from a variety of cars, but usually there is very little left of the original racing car, except its history and its character. From these small particles a complete new car is built, its only connection with the original car being a few components and the last-known pile of rust left over when decomposition set in.

Facsimile

Purely and simply a racing car that now exists when there never was an original. If a factory built four examples of a particular Grand Prix model, for instance, and there are now five in existence, then the fifth can only be a facsimile, fake, clone, copy or reproduction. If the fifth car was built by the same people or factory who built the four original cars, then at best it could be a “Replica” of the four original cars, but such a situation is very unlikely. There are many reasons for building a facsimile, from sheer enthusiasm for a particular model to simple avarice, and it is remarkable how many facsimiles have been given a small piece of genuine history in order to try to authenticate the fake, and thus raise its value.
Facsimiles have been built of just about everything from Austin to Wolseley, some being so well made that it is difficult to tell them from the originals. Some owners have been known to remain strangely silent about the origins of their cars when they have been mistaken for the real thing. Other facsimiles have been declared openly and honestly by the constructors, such as the facsimile that has been built of an A/B-type E.R.A., or the series of facsimiles of 250F Maseratis that have been built. The trouble usually starts when the cars are sold to less scrupulous owners, who first convince themselves they have bought a genuine car, and then try to convince the rest of the sporting world. The disease is very prevalent in the world of museums, on the assumption that the paying public are gullible.

Special

This name applies to one-off cars that are the product of the fertile brain of the constructor. It is probably true to say that no special has ever been finished! It may be finished sufficiently to allow it to race, but inevitably the constructor will be planning further modifications while he is still racing it. If the special builder ever says his car is finished, it will usually indicate that it is now obsolete and he is starting on a new one. The rebuilding or restoring of a special to use as an Historic racing car, by someone who is not the original constructor, can mean either that the car is rebuilt to a known point in time that appeals to the new owner, or he can continue the process of development where the originator left off.
The nice thing about specials is that they are a law unto themselves and do not need to be put into any sort of category. A special can be totally accepted as “Genuine, authentic, reconstructed or facsimile”.

Duplication

This is a disease which started many years ago within the ranks of the lovers of Bugatti cars. Unscrupulous people dismantled a Grand Prix Bugatti into its component parts and with the right hand sold an incomplete car as a “basket case” and with the left hand sold another incomplete car as a “box of bits”. The two buyers eventually found suitable second-hand components to replace the missing parts, or had new bits made, and we ended up with two Grand Prix Bugattis where there has only been one. Naturally each owner claims “authenticity” for his complete car. The Bugatti Owners Club – and the majority of its members – strongly disapprove of this practice.
Unfortunately the disease has spread to many other makes, especially those that were built in large numbers. At best this whole business borders on fraud.

Destroyed

A simple enough word that applies to a racing car that has been involved in an accident or fire in which no tangible components are left in recognizable shape or form.

Scrapped

This usually applies to a car that is taken out of service by a factory team and either deliberately destroyed so that nothing is left, or useful components are removed and put into store and the rest is thrown on the scrap heap for crushing or melting down. There have been cases of a chassis frame being rescued from the scrap heap and used to re-create a new car. In no way can the new car be described as genuine. If the factory scrapped a car and removed its number from their records, than that car has gone for ever, and a nebulous collection of old and new components can hardly justify the claiming of the scrapped number.

Broken up

Similarly, if a factory records that a car has been broken up, it should mean exactly that. It has gone for good.

Converted

There have been examples of a Type A model being converted by the factory into a Type B and then a Type C. The particular car as an entity never disappeared, though it might be difficult to recognize that the Type C was once a Type A. It is virtually impossible to re-convert such a car back to a Type A, no matter how desirable it may be. The perfect example is the E.R.A. that started life as R4B in 1936, was converted to R4C in 1937, and then into R4D in 1938 and was much modified again in 1948. The car still exists as R4D, with a well-documented continuous history, and is as genuine as they come but it can never revert back to R4B

 

Jenks was a good friend. We had this discussion several time before he put this all down on paper.

My last suggestion was that you should be able to buy a 'Fake' car with 'Fake' money

Had he lived long enough I am sure he would have found the HAMB and hungout here. He had a driving interest in everything wheeled

 

This is very true, when you read Raymond Mays book about running the white riley and the villiers vauxhaul, just how often the cars were rebuilt and torn down and modified and reconstructed all in the name of going faster.

the cars are all there, but are the cars as raced by Raymond Mays and are witnesses to his creative genius, but the vauxhaul is a far cry from the 30/98 he originally raced.

this is a great thread, that is really well done

 

BTTT I love this stuff.

 

I have a friend who is a big Mopar fan. He has a couple of Superbirds and I helped him pull a real '69 Charger 500 out of a junk yard (man, that was over 25 years ago now). He then fought the MO guvment for several years to get it titled. It was stored in an old barn on his Cleveland, MO farm along with several other collectible cars (Challenger 'verts and a '69 AMX among them). One morning the whole thing went up in flames and a huge beam fell smack on top of the 500 and burned it to a crisp. A guy comes out and spends Big Bucks for the hulk. Why? Because the VIN tag was the only thing left that was worth anything and the world had a new "real" 500 that was based solely on that tag.

 

We did some work for someone once who had a '52 Allard J2X all dis-assembled in a chicken coupe, original Cadillac 331 and all. The whole car was there (all over the place), original seats, belts, wheels etc...25K but someone came in from England and nabbed it before we could.....Im still waiting to find a Cobra or a set of Ardun heads in a barn though.....
-Dean

 

Here are some pics to go along with the Auto Union story.Cool stuff!!

 

When I was Vintage road racing my 1958 Austin Healey sprite in the early 1980's there were twice as many Sebring sprites running vintage racing than where ever produced by the factory. With the popularity of vintage racing since then I am sure the problem has gotton worse on old production based race cars. Kinda like duce roadsters ???

 

this was in the news paper several years ago but I don't remember exactly where .A couple buy a house at an estate auction .the husband is working around the brick garage doing some repairs and in doing some measurements discovers that inside is about 6 feet smaller than outside from front to back. gets real curious as to why so he knocks a couple bricks out of the back wall and looks in with a flashlight .inside this vault he finds a brand new corvair convertable all properly mothballed for long term storage with all the paperwork etc.milage on car was just the distance from the dealer to the storage unit.the story made the news because of the lawsuit the origional owners family brought to try and regain the car.there were photos of everything in the article kinda like that plymouth that got put in a timecapsul but the guy who entombed the corvair went to grat lengths to be sure it would be preserved even blocking it up by the frame so the suspension was unloaded

 

the word recreation/recreating seems fitting to some of these cars

 

One and the same Corbin.
The Autocar was a gem as well as a 1903 Metz he did. I first met John when I joined the Granite State Antique Car Club; I was deep into I8 pre war Buicks at the time and also had a 35 2dr with a 390 Caddy. I showed up at one of the meetings in the 35 and got in a real pissing contest with the farmers who thought a real antique was a model A that looked like it sat in a ditch for 20 years. John stood up for me and we became good friends.

 

great thread guys. I am new to HAMB and any forum for that matter, but couldn't pass it up. I have been fascinated by the aero engine racers of the teens and twenties and AAA cars that raced during teens and twenties. Babs was the old Higham Special I believe bought from Count Zborowski's estate. Zborowski had built the two Chitty Bang Bang cars with Maybach and Benz aero engines in old Mercedes chain drive chassis. Babs though ended up with one of the 1650 cubic inch Packard Liberty aircraft engines. All three of these cars were behemoths especially when compared to Lockhart's Blackhawk for instance. I have the very first Liberty aero styled engine (serial number 1) displacing 299 cubic inches which allowed it to race AAA and Indy from the period 1915 through 1919 (although only raced at Indy in 1919). I have researched this car and era for over twenty years now and ended up with a file cabinet full of stuff and always felt and tried to prove that Packard who built the 299 racer also had some Twin Six racers very close to the 299. Packard people told me I was nuts but one night I get a call that some guy wants to buy my engine and says he has found a car in the jungle in Paraguay and I told him to fax me a photo and I almost fell out of my chair, because it appeared to be a dead ringer for the 299. It turns out the hood was too long and the car has now been restored with a Twin Six and is out on the show circuit. The day after it was removed from the overseas container I started to help the owner document the car and we have become good friends. When you think there are no more finds they seem to pop up. Who knows some of these early cars (300 cu in) raced in Cuba after WWI. Also the Grey Wolf recreation looks pretty good, my opinion is better than the original now owned by one of the Packard Museums in Ohio. The original was owned by my grandfather so I saw that engine a lot as a kid and I remember when it was "restored". I have never been overly happy with it. The owner who built the Packard Model K in So Cal tried to get me to be an intermediary to buy the car from my uncle but when I found out his plans I told him no thanks. The restorer who built the K (and probably the Grey Wolf recreation), is a great guy though and a helluva craftsman. The whole thread on restoration versus recreation was most interesting and there is not enough time and space for my two cents. Two of the photos are the South American racer and the other two are the 299 (as it is called).

 

Cool post !
with that said , it seems to me that too many people consider cars as an investment, rather than a passion ... , . First thing that came to mind when I saw this post was the story about the guy in England ( GB ) who loved Ferrari 250 GTOs` He recreated & sold a few ( Nice, High quality cars with V12 engines & gearboxes that came from less popular sixties Ferraries ( those Cars stripped from engines/Gearboxes, was later resold with a SBC drivetrain or something simmilar )
His goal was to reproduce the 250GTO in every detail .... NEW Everything !!
Frames & bodys was made by skillfull English craftsmen , and he had plans for reproducing Engines,gearboxes and Borannies . He came pretty close to have the Gearboxes reproduced ( By the same firm in Italy who made them for Ferrari in the first place ) , But sorry to say , he was found dead(Prolly killed ) in a London Hotell-room before the Gearbox-deal was a reality I`m getting old , and tend to forget details , but I belive this was happening in the early eighties ...?
I still have the English magazine who told this story ( tried to find it, But with no luck ,... Classic`n throughbreed , was it? ), and if I remeber this right , The magazine had a theory that the GTO-guy was killed by people who owned REAL 250GTOs , and was desperate enough to do this to protect their investment....
KLAZ

 

When I had a restoration shop in So Cal in the eighties, within a stones's throw of my shop there were not only Ferrari's getting all out"facelifts" but
also 540Ks Mercedes and other similar cars being created. There has been a bunch of funny business with many of the Amercian classics and now the muscle cars etc. I keep my mouth shut because I do not want to end up persona non grata at other's shops. There really is something to buyer beware.

 

jimdillon, Welcome to the HAMB! That Packard racer story was very interesting,back in the 1970's there was a fellow from Oklahoma, Mr. Skinner (?) that was peacing one back together. I think Dick Merrit found the engine under the front porch in a bad section of Detroit. Body was found in the Hershey flea market and chassis some where else. Do you have any info and or an update on the restoration? Found out that the transmission in "BABS" was from one of the Blitzen Benz race cars. I always enjoy reading about the early cars and the research and restoration of them.

 

My favorite fake is Rabbit...Created by Austin Clark jr Assembled by Ralph Buckley 18ltr Benz Zep motor in a Mercedes truck chassis.

The owners now love telling folks it's REAL

 

Is this the car you're talking about? I took the photo in 1964 here in town at the HCCA Fall Meet, artist Peter Helck owned it at the time. The radiator was from a model 48 Locomobile. I can dig up a feature on it if anyone is interested.

 

You are correct that the transmission in Babs was one of the 3 speed crashboxes out of one of the Biltzen Benz cars (or so the story goes). This was post the Great War era and Germany was not quite back in the racing business to have a large supply of heavy duty racing stuff. The Blitzen Benz cars were stout but outdated, as were the early Mercedes frames, but they could handle the punishment of these large aircraft engines.

As to the other Packard racer you bring up, Brad Skinner from Bartlesville Oklahoma owned the remains of one of the 23 Packard racers (OHC 6 cylinders). These were fabulous jewelled little racing cars built under the direction of Ralph DePalma at Earl Anthony's California shop.They worked feverishly to get the cars done and bug free prior to the 1923 Indy but as evidenced by Jesse Vincent's (Packard's chief engineer) diary such was not the case. All three of the cars were not ready but they were quite fast and probably hoping for fate I suppose, he decided to race them. All three dropped out with problems. They probably would have done quite well versus the Millers if given time and a chance to work out the bugs, but Packard went out of the racing business and most of the stuff was destroyed. One car made it out the back door and raced rather unsuccessfully. Parts of it were found Brad and he onsold it just prior to me buying the 299 remains from him or I may have been greedy enough to buy both. In 1994 I corresponded and spoke with Roger and Greg Beck of Indianapolis about the info I had on the cars (cam timing etc) but I do not believe they went far with the project. i have heard a couple of stories but believe the remains are in Ohio with a collector, altho don't take that to the bank.

As to Bluto's comments, you may know more than I do on this topic, but the Rabbit the First story has been a colorful topic for longer than I have been around and I will at least put in my two cents. There were actually three Chitty Bang Bang cars and then the Higham Special was the fourth of the so-called behemoth aero engine cars. These cars were built by Captain Clive Gallop who was the engineer for Count Zborowski. They were all built to set speed records mostly for the Brooklnds Track in the UK. Babs (Higham) of course set the records on the Pendine Sands, where it resides today in its resurrected glory. The car pictured is referred to as Rabbit the first. As I understand it, when this car came to the US albeit in a somewhat incomplete state, several people thought it to be one of the Chitty cars and there were rumors and accusations galore as to what it was. Some called it a pseudo Chitty and other called it a fake. It had been missing most of its original body and radiator. It was rebuilt to resemble the Chitty cars because no one really knew what it was apparently. Sometime in the fifties or sixties(I would have to dig aound to find the date), Captain Clive Gallop was asked what it was and apparently he related that the car was built by a Mr Scarisbrick (UK). Scarisbrick had a Mercedes repair firm (CH Crowe and Co-Vauxhaul, London) build the car in 1922 using an early Mercedes chain-drive chassis and installed a six cylinder Benz aero engine taken from a captured German airplane. It became a Benz Mercedes as opposed to a Mercedes Benz (as it was the product of two separtate firms).Apparently the only racing it did was at the Fanoe Islands in Denmark where it apparently won four races in 1923 (some of our Danish friends may have access to photos to this event-if so see if you run across any photos of a 12 cylinder Packard at Fanoe in 1921).

I suppose I could go on and on as there were also rumors of a lawsuit regarding Chitty II as well. If someone was to write a comprehensive story on these cars it would be most interesting. If any of you have any proof that all I have said is part of an elaborate hoax then I suppose all I can say is-never mind.

 

No one had a better sense of humor that Austy,Alec,Ralph,and Peter
I am SURE they are laughing now!!!!!

But it all shows that unhistory is remembered after the JOKE is forgotten

The car was named ''Benz Mercedes'' by Wm Jackson. Bill was the ed. of Bulbhorn for many years and a friend to all these fellows as was I.

Rabbit was made......made of good stuff but assembled none the less.

The rest is BS