# Auto Union Type C Blueprints Unearthed at Torrance, CA Estate Sale, Posted on TheCarLounge



## [email protected] (Apr 9, 2004)

One of the advantages of Fourtitude's networked Vortex Media Group forums are its networked forums, most notably that of The Car Lounge or TCL as we tend to refer to it in emails and typed communications around our offices. TCL has become a fixture of people with all sorts of automotive interest and that's particularly exemplified in posts like one we found today by a forum user on here known as *renglish*.

Seems Renglish attended an estate sale in Torrance, CA recently where he found (and picked up) negatives of blueprint schematics detailing the design of the Auto Union Type C. The two images show the car from every angle (above) and also detailed images of the chassis and major components (below).

As most regular readers of this website know, the iconic pre-war Auto Union racecars a.k.a. Silver Arrows dominated the grand prix racing circuits in those years just ahead of and during World War II. These cars, designed by Ferdinand Porsche, pioneered the idea of mid-engine chassis design and the Type C was powered by a 520-hp supercharged V16. Speeds reached with the cars were not matched again for decades while drivers made due with neither helmets nor seatbelts in that bygone era.










These two negatives are signed "Jim Ison 1965" though not much more is known of their origin. Interestingly, Auto Unions racers of this era haven't exactly been easy to access until more recently. In the early days after the war the Auto Union plant in Zwickau fell behind the Iron Curtain and nearly every existing Auto Union was spirited back to Russia after being found hidden in a coal mine. Only one Type C was believed to have survived the war and remained in a German museum.

Well after these plans were created, several more were located in the former USSR and were extracted, most now in the hands of Audi Tradition. Audi even contracted UK firm Crossthwaite and Gardiner to build several more "replicas" painstakingly based on the remaining cars, photographs and surviving design schematics probably not much different than these.










We don't believe these schematics to be associated with the factory, especially given their 1965 date, but we still find them hugely interesting. Even better, Renglish has scanned them in at super high resolution and has made them available for download * HERE *.

Read the original Car Lounge thread via the link below.

* Full Story *


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