Die Vergessene Stromlinie - Auto Union Typ D Stromlinie 1938

30 June 1938: The Auto Union team travelled to Champagne for its first race of the year, the French Grand Prix. Three days later, the eagerly awaited first showdown between Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union under the new racing formula took place on the circuit in Reims. Two extraordinary racing cars with elegant streamlined bodies are carefully unloaded from the Auto Union transporters and cause a stir. However, they are not used and soon disappear from the public eye - until today.

Even in the relevant publications, little is known about the Type D racing car, with only a few pictures and hardly any information coming to light. Reason enough for the editor of this book, Jörg Geisler, to put together all the ‘pieces of the puzzle’ in more than a decade of detailed work. It was also a reason for the doyen of Auto Union history, Prof. Dr Peter Kirchberg, to support the project and become intensively involved.

For the first time, rare and in some cases never-before-published images and documents are brought to the public, framed by extracts from well-known but also specially prepared papers by a number of renowned experts in this field. The test reports and patents, which can be read in full, show very clearly how much of a development lead Auto Union had with the concept of this racing car, which was only taken up again by the competition in the 1960s.