And of course in due time, Hitler's enthusiasm for Dr. Porsche, first activated at this meeting, led to the birth of the Volkswagen, all made possible by the original Auto-Union Grand Prix car connection.

Once Porsche and Auto-Union had the State subsidy in hand - Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union each received 450,000 Reichmarks (about $250,000) annually so Auto-Union had already won a round against Mercedes-Benz by having some of motorsports budget siphoned off from Stuttgart - they spent most of 1933 building the car in their own makeshift Auto-Union "works" located in Zwickau in a small building within the Horch factory. There, Porsche developed a car that would meet the performance standards set forth in Porsche's contract with Auto-Union, which required, among other things, that the car demonstrate the following performance characteristics in order for the contract to be fulfilled:

1. The engine must produce 250 bhp at 4500 rpm;
2. The car must run at speed for 10 laps in succession at the AVUS and reach a top speed of at least 155 mph on the AVUS straights.

Throughout the Summer of 1933, a team of 60 people worked night and day to get the car ready for its performance tests.

Final Exams at Nurburgring, Monza and AVUS

On November 13, 1933, the first Auto-Union chassis had taken shape and was ready for a series of preliminary tests at Nurburgring that were conducted from November 14th to 21st, 1933. To show how rudimentary the Auto-Union team still was, the car was trailered to Nurburgring using a Horch 830 sedan with a trailer hitch on it!

On January 12, 1934, the new Auto-Union was tested again, this time at the AVUS, where the performance tests that would confirm the acceptability of the car as a matter of contract would be held. Because of poor weather, the testing program at AVUS was truncated and the two available development chassis were shipped to Monza. The tests at Monza ran into early February 1934 and were regarded as sufficiently successful that Porsche pronounced the team ready for the formal AVUS contract test runs. By this time, four cars were authorized to be built by the Auto-Union management: three race cars and one practice car.

On March 6, 1934, just a year from the meeting at Hitler's office at the Chancellery in Berlin, over at the AVUS track in the same town, Hans Stuck put the Auto-Union A-Type though its paces and the car passed its final exams with flying colors, exceeding the contract requirements imposed upon Dr. Porsche.

In addition to meeting the core requirements of 10 fast laps at the AVUS, the new long-tailed Auto-Union A-type set new world speed records, with Stuck's windscreen being replaced by a claustrophobic-looking aerodynamic bubble canopy for the record breaking runs. In the Auto-Union's world speed record and endurance runs, Hans Stuck averaged 135 mph for one hour, then for 100 miles and then for 200 kilometers. Contract satisfied!

Silver Arrows: What's in a Color?

While Hitler was sufficiently entranced with Porsche's rear-engine design to throw in a few Reichmarks to spur on the project, Mercedes-Benz was also a beneficiary of the Third Reich's largesse and was equally hard at work on developing its Grand Prix car for the 1934 season. Indeed, Hitler had been shown the Mercedes Grand Prix challenger once an early prototype was up and running. Interestingly, because the national racing color of Germany was white, the car Hitler was shown in January 1934 (which had no headrest fairing) was thought to have been an off-white Mercedes-Benz W25. Indeed, the Mercedes S, SS, SSK and SSKL line of cars that were so successful in the hands of Rudy Caracciola were also painted off-white. It is clear from the outset, however, that the Auto-Union Grand Prix car was the first to run in silver aluminum, with the Mercedes following suit in due course (according to apocryphal legend, at Neubeuer's suggestion in stripping off the white paint to save weight), to complete the creation of the Silver Arrows legend.

But it must be said that although Auto-Union may have the bragging rights to initiating German Racing Silver as the national color in 1934, in all other respects it is Mercedes-Benz, not Auto-Union, that should command the respect of anyone scrutinizing the landscape of German motorsport when you consider the historic and unique contributions Mercedes-Benz has made over a long period, from the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911 which a Mercedes briefly led, to the factory victory of Mercedes over the dominant Peugeots at the French Grand Prix in 1914, to Aintree in 1955 with Moss and Fangio in the Mercedes W196 and to the McLaren-Mercedes MP4-17D of the 2003 season. And Mercedes-Benz does have my allegiance intellectually, but for some reason my heart belongs to Auto-Union, a car designed by a friend of Hitler for godssakes, so what is going on?

Auto-Union's Inexplicable Appeal

It is just that the Auto-Union story, how the main players went about their hour upon the stage, the colleagues they did it with and where they did it has more, well, underdog appeal, more humanity and a certain style, glamour and panache to it that is somehow lacking in the Other German team. I love the way the Auto-Union team seemed constantly to be experimenting, as Formula One teams do today, to give Stuck and Rosemeyer a better car to compete with against Caracciola and von Brauchitsch. I love the muscular-looking 19" and 22" Continental tyres on wire wheels and the inverted horse collar grille. I love the idea of the doped aircraft fabric used on the side panels of the early cars, the spectacular look of the several versions of streamliners the team conjured up during Auto-Union's brief history and the differing windscreens and exhaust pipes, the scoops, fairings, crank handle, vents, louvers, rivets and bulges that cropped up everywhere on the bodywork of the race cars as the car was being developed that make it appear that the car was bursting at its seams.

I also like the looks of the Auto-Union people. While archival footage of the Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix team always features the rotund Alfred Neubeuer, the legendary Mercedes-Benz team manager, brandishing his black and red pit flags, schmoozing with the Nazi overlords visiting the paddock or trying to rein in Manfred von Brauchitsch from showing up Neubeuer's lead driver Rudy Caracciola, most Grand Prix fans would not be able to identify Auto-Union's team manager (Willie Walb initially, who also drove the car in early tests, and later on Dr. Kurt Feuereissen).

Even Dr. Ferdinand Porsche did not make much of a public relations fuss of himself when he came to the races to help out with his stopwatches, always wearing his trademark vested tweed suit and hat and attending to business.

There was also the earnest and studious Professor Robert Eberan von Eberhorst implementing the designs for Dr. Porsche's magnificent beast, tweaking the supercharger and engine and gradually ratcheting up the horsepower from 295 bhp for the Auto-Union A Type to 520 bhp for the Auto-Union C Type.

Even the canvas-covered transport Auto-Union Renndienst trucks were classy looking as they were filmed traipsing all around Europe to bring the cars to the far-flung venues where the Auto-Unions were to face off against their principal rivals, Mercedes-Benz and Alfa Romeo, and to a lesser extent Maserati, Bugatti, Talbot and Delahaye.

And travel the Auto-Union team did. To Tripoli in North Africa by boat, trucks and all, for Marshal Balbo's enticing lottery races; to South America for a race at Rio de Janeiro; to Donington Park in England to awe the British with the sight of German might, a harbinger of the Messerschmitts to come; to a damp and foggy mountainside in Austria for the Grossglockner Pass hill climb, (sometimes using Hans Stuck's special hill climb Auto-Union V16 with four rear wheels); by ship again to the suburbs of New York on Long Island for the Vanderbilt Cup races (swastika symbols emblazoned on the cockpit panels like the sponsor decals on today's F1 cars), to the traditional Grand Prix venues like Spa, Monaco, Monza and Rheims; and to the fearsome German tracks that are as legendary as the cars themselves, the Nurburgring and the wall of death at the AVUS.

Finally, Auto-Union traveled to autobahns like the Frankfurt-to-Darmstadt highway for speed record runs where Rosemeyer for Auto-Union squared off against Caracciola for Mercedes in January 1938, both cars sporting their trademarks, the four interlocked rings of Auto-Union in Rosemeyer's case and the Silver Star of Mercedes on Caracciola's hood, to see which team could turn in the highest speed in their modified Grand Prix streamliners. In the end, the top speed was set by Rosemeyer in his Eberan von Eberhart-designed streamliner Auto-Union, which on one run hit 276.1 mph, before Rosemeyer was killed when the wind buffeted the streamliner on what would be his last run, the streamliner crashed and Rosemeyer was thrown into the trees.

Ode to the Auto-Union Drivers

And what a story Bernd Rosemeyer was, Auto-Union's star driver, a supernova who burst on the Grand Prix scene in 1935 as an ex-motorcycle champion and almost instantly mastered the tricky rear-engined Auto-Union, in the wet or in the dry. Rosemeyer lived his short life to the fullest, a darling of the German public; in effect he was the original Michael Schumacher, maintaining throughout his career the sunniest of dispositions and the affection of the German people.

And why shouldn't he be happy? On July 13, 1937, Rosemeyer married Elly Beinhorn, an accomplished pilot and an attractive woman, soon after becoming a champion at Auto-Union. Fun-loving character that he was, Rosemeyer managed to convince Auto-Union to let Elly drive the V16 and she did a couple laps at Monza in one. The couple had one child, Bernd Jr., who was just ten weeks old at the time of his father's accident.

Bernd and Elly, known in their time as the "fastest couple in the world," were madly in love for the 18 months or so of their marriage until Rosemeyer's fatal accident and during that time each was very much involved in the other's sport and career. Rosemeyer acted as Elly's mechanic and navigator in a hugely daunting flight in her Messerschmitt BF108 Taifun aeroplane from Europe to Africa - no radio, just a compass, a husband and her experience - so that Bernd could compete in two Christmas Grand Prix races in South Africa in December 1937, the South African Grand Prix in East London and the Grosvenor Grand Prix in Capetown.

When they landed, Bernd headed for the Auto-Union pits and she took up the cudgels as a filmmaker and some of the Auto-Union archival footage we have today was filmed by Elly Beinhorn; there are also many shots taken by others of the happy couple gracing the paddock, the Juan Pablo Montoya and Connie Freydell of their time.

As a driver, Rosemeyer drove with flair and was mesmerizing to watch in a Senna-like way; there are few sights as thrilling as watching Rosemeyer pitching the Auto-Union sideways in one of the curves of the Nurburgring with his hands rotating the steering wheel on full opposite look to balance the beast. Credit goes to Audi for not forgetting him and for developing the "Rosemeyer" V16 concept car (top speed 217 mph), which beautifully evokes both the Auto-Union grille as well as the swoopy curves of the streamliner in which Rosemeyer lost his life.

Hans Stuck, next after Rosemeyer in the Auto-Union Pantheon of drivers, was a friend of Ferdinand Porsche's and Auto-Union's chief driver from the beginning of the project, before Rosemeyer, Varzi and Nuvolari ever joined the team. As we have seen, Stuck was also crucial in getting the financial support to fund the Auto-Union race team. He had the honor of winning for Auto-Union in only its second Grand Prix and was the legendary King of the Mountain for his astonishing speed on hill climbs. On the side of his car was stenciled his name "Hans" and a rendering of his trademark, a tortoise, but he did not move like a turtle. In 1934, Stuck became both the German Road and Mountain Champion winning 3 Grands Prix and 4 hill climbs in the Auto-Union.

Stuck won the 1934 German Grand Prix in July at the Nurburgring for Auto-Union, coming back strongly against the Mercedes-Benz W25, which won the Eiffelrennen at the same racetrack a month earlier in June 1934. He was brave too: Stuck drove an enclosed streamliner at one of the Tripoli races but had to abandon it when it caught fire. He was the driver who stayed with the team the longest. His son, Hans Stuck, Jr., has taken over where his father left off, initially in Formula One, and he is still racing in sportscars; recently Hans Stuck, Jr., had the opportunity to drive the Auto-Union his father made famous and, looking more like his father every day, Hans Stuck, Jr., is seen regularly in the paddock at Formula One races, the remaining visible link to his father and Auto-Union.

Achille Varzi, who joined the team after Rosemeyer, was the opposite of the effervescent Rosemeyer; Varzi often had a sour disposition and was dependent on a morphine habit during the later stages of his career. Nonetheless, Varzi was a fierce competitor and could always be counted on to put on a good show in the difficult races and in the races where the purse money was attractive, such as Tripoli, which he won once for Auto-Union.

Finally, in Auto-Union's last years, Tazio Nuvolari joined the team in 1938, replacing Rosemeyer. The footage we have of the diminutive Mantuan manhandling the powerful and still unwieldy Auto-Union D-Type 12-cylinder around Nurburgring - determination etched on his face and his small frame shifting around in the roomy cockpit - is some of the most exciting and evocative footage in all of motorsports. It is fitting that Nuvolari (who, like Stuck, had a turtle, a golden one, as his talisman, a gift from the Italian poet Gabrielle D'Annunzio) won the final race of the Silver Arrows era as the storm clouds of World War II gathered, the Yugoslavian Grand Prix at Belgrade on September 3, 1939, Dr. Porsche's 64th birthday. The race took place under strange conditions, as it was held on the day Britain and France declared war on Germany, in response to Hitler's taking Poland on September 1, 1939. As a result, the five-car grid was made up almost entirely of Silver Arrows: two Auto-Unions and two Mercedes-Benzs, with a local Yugoslav driver in an old Bugatti rounding out the field. When that race ended and Nuvolari took the victory in the Auto-Union the curtain came down on the short but stunning story of Auto-Union. Although Auto-Union's interlocked four chrome rings remain in the public eye as Audi's trademark to remind us of this glorious past, the Auto-Union Grand Prix cars would never race again.

Auto-Union Clones

Which does not mean that they were heard from no more; after the war, race cars of all marques that had been hidden away throughout Europe magically emerged from the woodwork to race again, except that such Auto-Unions as had survived were in the Eastern bloc and did not immediately emerge. (It is ironic given the Auto-Union's origins as produced under Hitler's wing, that it was Russian dictator Josef Stalin's son, Vasily Stalin, that "saved" the Auto-Unions by allegedly spiriting away 18 Auto-Union chassis by rail from Zwickau to Moscow under protection of the Red Army in the closing days of WWII.) In time, chassis, engines and parts came to light, some of them of questionable provenance and private collectors and Audi itself have reclaimed and restored a few of the Auto-Unions (and more replicas are in the works), including an original 1938/1939 Type C car in the Audi Museum, a Type C car in the Deutsches Museum, some later D-Types and a breathtaking Streamliner, all of which appear regularly at vintage festivals to remind us of the fabulous era in motor racing when the Silver Arrows took aim across the earth.