16 Cylinder Audi Type 52

Presented and driven by Hans-Joachim Stuck at this past summer’s  2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed, this 16 cylinder Audi street machine is a little known descendent of the famous Auto Union Formula One cars. Don’t look for it in your Audi dealer’s showroom as this is a one off, built from Audi’s lost plans of a road machine that never got created.

From Goodwood news site

Few people know that while the Grand Prix race cars were being developed, Auto Union AG and the Ferdinand Porsche design office also planned a street-legal sports sedan. The concept papers called the vehicle “Schnellsportwagen”, apparently its intended marketing name. Today, with its distinctive characteristics, the car most closely resembles a classic GT.

The Auto Union Type 52, as the project came to be known, was intended to be sold to customers for driving in long-distance races such as the Mille Miglia or in sports car competitions such as the endurance races at Spa-Francorchamps or Le Mans. There was also talk of the car being a factory race car.

Now Audi has built this car, the Schnellsportwagen, and presented it to the public for the first time at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in mid-July, 2024.

In 1934. The project managers decided to build a test car – but, it never materialized. The project was abandoned in 1935, and its trail lost in the archives of Audi and Porsche. But the developers left much groundbreaking work on paper. It was based on the technology of the Grand Prix race car that was developed at the same time: The chassis from the Auto Union Type 52 was designed as a ladder frame with a mid-mounted engine. The drivetrain of the Auto Union Type 22 was used, but the compression of the powerful 16-cylinder engine was reduced to allow the car to run on regular gasoline.

Stefan Trauf, Head of Audi Tradition: “We are thrilled to present the Auto Union Type 52 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. This car gets people excited about design and technology. For me, it is an absolute dream car. In its day, unfortunately, it remained only a dream – one that we are now, 90 years later, able to bring to life. The Auto Union Type 52 demonstrates the ingenuity of its creators and the technological innovation of the time. Being able to experience the Schnellsportwagen live is a great pleasure for me.” In its day, it would have been one of the most powerful street-legal vehicles on the road and in sports car competitions – a true “Schnellsportwagen”.

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Technical data Auto Union Type 52