Thursday, June 28, 2018

La femme et l'automobile

Women on the Allure of Driving the Rallye des Princesses


Kate Walker of The New York Times edited by James Karthauser



Competitors in the 2016 rally, which covers country roads at speeds averaging 25 to 30 miles per hour. While the vintage cars add to the glamour, they often don’t provide the smoothest ride. Credit - Richard Bord, via Rallye des Princesses
Competitors in the 2016 rally, which covers country roads at speeds averaging 25 to 30 miles per hour. While the vintage cars add to the glamour, they often don’t provide the smoothest ride.
Credit - Richard Bord, via Rallye des Princesses

The concept reads like a dream: five days spent driving classic cars from Paris to Southern France, stopping off along the way for leisurely lunches and nights in four- and five-star hotels. As motorsport experiences go, the Rallye des Princesses Richard Mille is a world apart — an all-female motorsport event aimed at providing entrants with a luxury experience in addition to an automotive adventure with breathtaking views. Some 90 women will take part in the six-day race that started on Saturday in Paris, and continues all this week, will travel some 1,000 miles of meandering roads in France and northern Spain, before crossing the finish line in Biarritz on the Atlantic coast of France.

[READ MORE: The Rich History of the Rallye des Princesses]

The first Rallye des Princesses in 2000 even included actual royalty: it counted among its entrants Princess Helene of Yugoslavia. She competed again in 2002 and 2006. The rally’s appeal extends beyond European royalty, and many of the 180 entrants this year are simply women who are passionate about cars and racing. Anne Sampeur of France, who first took part in 2014, came across the event by accident, when she stumbled across the start of the race in Paris. “I discovered the Rallye des Princesses while strolling Place Vendôme with friends about 10 years ago,” Sampeur recalled. “At the time, we had an HMC — an Austin-Healey replica, but my husband didn’t want to lend me his car. When I was ready to register, we bought a silver gray 1979 convertible Beetle.”

Anne Sampeur, right, and Joelle Szpala in a 1979 Volkswagen Beetle in the 2014 rally. Credit Richard Bord/Getty Images
Anne Sampeur, right, and Joelle Szpala in a 1979 Volkswagen Beetle in the 2014 rally.
Credit - Richard Bord/Getty Images

Since 2014, Sampeur has entered the rally with friends and family, and in 2017 competed alongside her 14-year-old daughter, Matisse, who served as navigator. The pair entered a navy blue 1979 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600. “It was great,” Sampeur said. While the vintage cars add to the glamour, open-top vehicles running at an average of 25 to 30 miles per hour along glorious country roads, the drive is often not smooth because of the age of the vehicles. “We place a particular premium on comfort, as the performance involved in driving a vintage car for 350 kilometers per day on country roads is one that ought to be paired with a well-earned rest,” said Viviane Zaniroli, the founder of the event.

Richard Mille, a lead partner accompanies the 18th Rallye des Princesses last summer photo courtesy of Invictus Magazine
Richard Mille, a lead partner accompanies the 18th Rallye des Princesses last summer
photo courtesy of Invictus Magazine

That well-earned rest includes spa treatments, luxury hotels, Champagne receptions and fine dining every evening, with a party at the finish line to round off the adventure. One regular participant is Coralie Chehab of Switzerland, entering her fifth Rallye des Princesses this year. Chehab is passionate about the event. “So many anecdotes, so many crazy laughs, so many memories to tell. Rallye des Princesses is not just a rally, it’s a vacation with 200 friends and cars.”


Florence Migraine Bourgnon, Julie Gayet, Jovanka Sopalovic at the Rallye des Princesses  photo courtesy of Purepeople.com
Florence Migraine Bourgnon, Julie Gayet, Jovanka Sopalovic at the Rallye des Princesses
photo courtesy of Purepeople.com
The Rallye des Princesses is open only to vintage cars — those registered before 1989 — split into groups roughly by decade. Some entrants own the cars, while others borrow from friends or drive cars furnished by sponsors. Chehab shares “an amazing 1967 gray convertible Mercedes-Benz 250SL Pagoda” with her co-driver and friend Gaëlle Wacziarg. The car is provided by a sponsor. “This beauty is definitely part of our team; she even has a name now — we call her Titine,” Chehab said. “Driving this car is a real pleasure, even though she is 50 years old. She is very comfortable and super easy to drive. A dream for this kind of rally.” Chehab entered the rally at the urging of Wacziarg, who returned from her first event full of enthusiasm. “I always had an interest in cars and always loved driving, but never thought I could participate in something so exceptional as the Rallye des Princesses,” Chehab said. “In the end, it didn’t take much to convince me to take part in this great adventure.”

The Rallye Route is a Beautiful Winding Affair through Southern France Photo courtesy of Franceracing.fr
The Rallye Route is a Beautiful Winding Affair through Southern France
Photo courtesy of Franceracing.fr

One of the advantages of driving a loaner vehicle at a rally is that maintenance is taken care of by the car’s owner. “We are pretty lucky with Titine; we never had serious mechanical problems,” Chebab said. “She is very well maintained by our sponsor — he always makes a check before and after every rally. “The car suffers a lot during the week, with the changes of temperature — Paris during the spring is not always sunny, while in the South of France the weather is already warm — and I think the worst for the Pagoda is when the road book takes us into the mountains,” she said about the route map. “She is a heavy car and not really made for climbing.”

A Selection of Vintage Cars lined up for the Next Leg of the Rallye des Princesses Photo courtesy of Zaniroli.com
A Selection of Vintage Cars lined up for the Next Leg of the Rallye des Princesses
Photo courtesy of Zaniroli.com

Sampeur struggled in 2015, breaking the clutch on her 1968 MGC at the end of the first day. “With the help of the MG club, I managed to find a garage to repair it with a clutch disc for an old car — 47 years old! So we didn’t run one day and took 7,000 penalty points,” she said. “On Tuesday, the hose was drilled. We saw the problem before departing for a regularity trial. We parked the car, and with rags and Scotch tape we fixed it to keep it going until lunch, where the great team of mechanics repaired it with real tools. “On Wednesday, the reverse gear decided to collapse, so we couldn’t make U-turns — to park the car we needed the help of mechanics to push us. And to finish the rally, before arriving in Saint-Tropez, our rearview mirror fell off. We laughed for a long time.”

The ultimate women’s motor sport get-away... Photo courtesy of Zaniroli.com
The ultimate women’s motor sport get-away...
Photo courtesy of Zaniroli.com

Making her Rallye des Princesses debut this year is Susan Fesmire of Texas, who will be driving a 1970 Triumph convertible.

“This is my first R.D.P., but I suspect not my last, and this may all sound over the top, but I have had more fun getting ready for this event than anything I have ever done,” she said. “I first learned about the rally from a friend of mine in 2014. Her adventure sounded so glamorous and challenging,” she said. “Over the next two years I thought of the race often. I frequently checked the race website and Googled images from past races. I was fascinated by the idea of a race for non-racers, the gorgeous French countryside, sleek historic cars and chateaus all with your best girlfriend. When I pored over Rallye pictures, they showed beautiful women of all ages, from all countries, who seemed not unlike me. They looked amazing, but also real. “The idea of participating stayed in the back of my mind,” Fesmire said. “Then one Sunday morning in August 2016, I was looking at the Rallye website and decided that I was going to do it,” she said. “All I had to do was convince my best friend to go with me.”

The Rally des Princesses is designed for women by a woman Viviane Zaniroli. Photo courtesy of Zaniroli.com
The Rally des Princesses is designed for women by a woman Viviane Zaniroli.
Photo courtesy of Zaniroli.com


“That Sunday morning was over a year and a half ago, and the allure of the race has not waned for Suzanne or me,” she said of her friend and co-driver Suzanne Swaner, also of Texas. “The 19th Rallye des Princesses has given us almost two years of planning, strategizing and daydreaming about six amazing days spent behind the wheel of a gorgeous red convertible, laughing with my best friend while participating in the most glamorous all-women car rally in the world. It just doesn’t get any better.”

Nazanin Lankarani contributed reporting.



Modern Aphrodites and dream cars have always made good combinations, and by the splendor of its forms the automobile has always been associated with feminine elegance and charm. From the manufacturing to competition, from daily driving to Concours d'Elegance, women have always been present in the world of Automobile.


Concours d'Elegance poster by Alain LevesqueLouis Vuitton, Bagatelle Concours d’Elegance 1991 poster by Razzia


For the next week l'art et l'automobile gallery is proud to feature a showing of artwork promoting the presence and influence that women had with the automobile culture in the last century. All items are available for purchase, but please note that in most cases we only have one of each of those pieces, so they will go on a first come first served basis.

Monte Carlo original tourism poster by Steve Carpenter, late 1960's'Industry & wisdom' bronze sculptures by Paul Aichele, 1891


Enjoy, and we hope you will find it an interesting subject that you would want to display on your wall or your shelf.

Don't forget to head to our Shopify Store for more great automotive memorabilia. We have many more items in our gallery, so do not hesitate to contact us if you are looking for something in particular. And as always, Like and Share us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Share a Picture with us on Instagram and catch up on the rest of the blog below.

Cheers!


Jacques Vaucher
Owner and Curator
l’art et l’automobile

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Porsche Museum builds a second “No. 1” 356 prototype

Replica is more accurate than the existing No. 1


Daniel Stroll of Hemmings Daily


Photos courtesy Porsche.
In its first decade, 356-001, the first vehicle to carry the Porsche name, suffered a number of ignominies. The letters in that nameplate got rearranged, an Opel full of nuns rear-ended it, and two of its seven private owners allowed it to lapse into neglect. Porsche itself, which has owned the car for the last 60 years, hasn’t done much better, restoring it but leaving intact many of the modifications those seven owners made. Using modern technology, however, the Porsche Museum has created a far more authentic replica as part of the marque’s 70th anniversary celebrations.

As it was conceived, the 356-001 wasn’t supposed to be badged a Porsche. Instead, as Karl Ludvigsen noted in “Porsche: Origin of the Species,” the Porsche family and senior staff wanted to renew the company’s design-consultancy relationship with Volkswagen and give the 200 or so workers on the company’s payroll in Gmünd, Austria, something substantial to do.

Inspiration came from a variety of sources, though chiefly from the design work Porsche was doing at the time for Cisitalia. “At the time that company was building a small sports car with a Fiat engine,” Ludvigsen quoted Ferry Porsche. “I said to myself: Why shouldn’t we be able to do the same thing with VW parts?” War-surplus Kubelwagens were common in that part of Austria, so Porsche had plenty of raw materials to work with.

The tubular space frame chassis that Erwin Komenda drew up in the summer of 1947 used Volkswagen suspension front and rear, though it placed the engine ahead of the rear axle to conform to Ferry Porsche’s wish that the car’s design emulate the pre-war Auto Union Grand Prix cars. To accommodate the mid-engine design, Komenda simply rotated the Volkswagen suspension 180 degrees with the transaxle. As Ludvigsen pointed out, that was less than ideal.


The leading-arm design of the rear-suspension geometry meant that when the rear wheels bounced up, or when the car rolled in a turn, the wheels toed outward instead of inward. In theory this reduced their cornering power and tended to increase oversteer. As well, torque reaction from rear-brake application tended to lift the rear of the car.

For an engine, the Porsche team simply repurposed a Volkswagen flat-four with a handful of modifications to bump output from 25 to 35 horsepower. Despite the increased performance, the Porsche team relied on cable-operated brakes.

Porsche 356-001 shortly after completion.

Komenda finalized the body design in the early months of 1948 and by April Porsche craftsman Friedrich Weber began construction of the aluminum body, ultimately finished in yellow. While Ferry Porsche once stated that construction of the body took two months, Ludvigsen wrote that Weber finished the body in a little more than three weeks, plenty enough time for the Porsche team to road-test serial number 356-001 prior to its July 4 debut at the Swiss Grand Prix in Bern and its July 11 demonstration laps at Innsbruck’s Rund um den Hofgarten road race.

By this time, Porsche had already turned its sights toward producing the 356 itself, albeit in a rear-engine configuration dubbed the 356/2. With their sights set on production, the Porsches decided to sell 356-001 in September 1948 to Josh Heintz of the Reisbach garage in Zürich. Heintz in turn sold it to Peter Kaiser, who rearranged the Porsche lettering on the car’s nose to read Pesco, a name he found snappier than Porsche.

Porsche 356-001 while in Hermann Schulthess’s ownership.


Kaiser had the brakes converted to hydraulic and drove it regularly until he sold it in 1951 to Zürich-based importer AMAG, which in turn sold 356-001 to Rosemarie Muff who, according to Ludvigsen, drove the car into the ground. Its next owner, Hermann Schulthess, rebuilt the car and replaced the Porsche lettering, but ended up sandwiched between the aforementioned Opel full of nuns and another car in a crash on the Gotthard pass. AMAG repaired the damage and in the process reshaped both front and rear ends and converted the single-piece rear-hinged engine and rear trunk cover to two pieces: one for the engine bay, one for the rear trunk.

Schulthess also had Porsche itself install a 1500S engine and larger hydraulic brakes before entering 356-001 into its first and only competition event, the Mitholz-Kandersteg hillclimb, in 1953. A baker by the name of Igoris swapped a 1300 coupe for 356-001 but, as Ludvigsen wrote, suffered from buyer’s remorse and simply garaged the car. Auto mechanic Franz Blaser bought it from Igoris and overhauled the car once again before exchanging it for a brand-new Speedster when Porsche finally decided to track down its very first car in 1958.

Around 1975 Porsche then restored the prototype one more time, though not to its original configuration: The 1500S engine remains part of the car, as do the hydraulic brakes, two-piece decklid, reshaped front and rear sheetmetal, and the bucket seats it picked up at some point.

356 No.1 Replica being assembled.


To celebrate the car’s 70th anniversary, the Porsche Museum decided – rather than subject 356-001 to another restoration – to re-create 356-001 a it appeared in 1948. To do so, the museum had 356-001 3D scanned and compared those scans with original photographs and with digitizations of Komenda’s original drawings.

Museum staff then edited the 3D scan to the prototype’s original shape and used that data to carve a life-size model of the prototype from rigid foam. That foam then served as a buck of sorts for modern-day craftsmen to build from scratch a new chassis and aluminum body before finishing the car with exact replicas of the trim, upholstery, gauges, and other fittings that adorned the original prototype.

For the most part, that is. Museum officials decided not to install a drivetrain in the replica. Instead, they had a basic tube axle fitted to allow the replica to roll around. According to a spokesperson for the museum, the decision to build it sans drivetrain was to avoid labeling it with terms such as “replica” or “recreation” and to avoid confusion with the original; instead, the museum considers it a “showcar.”

The Porsche Museum has scheduled an extensive tour for both the prototype and the replica, starting with a June 8 ceremony in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen and continuing to Johannesburg, Goodwood, Guangzhou, and Vancouver. The prototype itself will also make an appearance at this year’s Rennsport Reunion in September at Laguna Seca.

We here at l'art et l'automobile are diehard Porsche fanatics, and we love finding and sharing tidbits of Porsche's legacy, like this replica, with our followers.  As a matter of fact, we are currently in the midst of a big Promotion of Porsche Memorabilia on our Website as we speak.  Not long ago, our blog detailed the history and creation of some Victory Posters commissioned by the Porsche Factory, and we've just released Chapter 2 of that collection that we acquired.  You can visit the Gallery here, and possibly add one of these pieces to your collection.  But hurry they're going fast, and We Only Have One of Each.  

And as always, Like and Share us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Share a Picture with us on Instagram and catch up on the rest of the blog below.


James Karthauser
Development and Social Media
l'art et l'automobile

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Mercedes & Benz: A Racing Journey

Race of the Titans - Monaco 1937 - print by Nicholas Watts, autographed

Celebrate more than 120 years of Racing Heritage with arteauto.com

by James Karthauser



Ever since motor racing began in the late 1800’s, Mercedes and Benz have been participating and winning. As they joined their efforts together the tradition continued and in the last 120+ years they have been very successful indeed. With only a few interruptions, due to wars or accident, the Marque from Stuttgart has championed successfully over many competitors and in all forms of racing they have entered, even to this day. 

Both Marques, Daimler-Motoren-Gesselsvhaft and Benz Patent-Motorwagen, independently enjoyed success in the sport of motor racing throughout their separate histories. A single Benz competed in the world's first motor race, the 1894 Paris–Rouen, where Émile Roger finished 14th in 10 hours 1 minute. The Mercedes Simplex of 1902, built by DMG, was Mercedes' first purpose built race car — much lower than their usual designs — which were similar to horse carriages; that model dominated racing for years. In 1914, just before the beginning of the First World War, the DMG Mercedes 35 hp won the French Grand Prix, finishing 1-2-3.

Blitzen Benz - Oil on Canvas Painting by Fred Stout, available in the collection of l'art et l'automobile
Blitzen Benz - Oil on Canvas Painting by Fred Stout, available in the collection of l'art et l'automobile

Karl Benz's company, Benz & Cie. built the "bird beaked", Blitzen Benz that set land speed records several times, reaching 141.7 mph in 1911. That record gained that model the reputation of being faster than any other automobile — as well as any train or plane. They were already constructing many aerodynamically designed race cars.

Grand Prix Racing and the Rise of the Silver Arrows


Benz was involved in Grand Prix motor racing from 1923, when the Benz Tropfenwagen, described as having a teardrop shape, was introduced to motorsport at the European Grand Prix at Monza. These, the brainchild of Benz chief engineer Hans Nibel, were inspired by the Rumpler Tropfenwagen and were intended to increase public acceptance of mid-engined cars. They resembled the later Auto Unions, and used the virtually unchanged Rumpler chassis. They were fitted with a 1,991 cc 80 hp inline six producing and demonstrated "impeccable roadholding" at 90 mph and above.

Despite a promising start, with a fourth and a fifth in their debut, they did no better in three years of Grands Prix and hillclimbing, and the expected public acceptance did not materialize. Financial difficulties led to a merger with Daimler.

G.P. of Monaco 1937 print by Michael Turner, available in the collection
G.P. of Monaco 1937 print by Michael Turner, available in the collection

But when the two companies were merged to form the Mercedes-Benz brand in 1926, they continued their relentless campaign of excellence. 

In the 1930s, the new joint company, Daimler-Benz, with their mighty Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows, dominated Grand Prix racing in Europe together with its rival, Auto Union. In fact the colour of the cars, which was later to become legendary, was unintentional - they had initially been painted white as was traditional for German cars, but the paint was stripped away to reduce weight. The cars set speed records up to 270 mph. The team was guided by the great racing team manager Alfred Neubauer until the company ceased racing at the start of WWII.

Formula 1 Racing

In 1954 Mercedes-Benz returned to what was now known as Formula One racing, in which a World championship having been established in 1950, using the technologically advanced Mercedes-Benz W196 which was run in both open-wheeled and streamlined forms. Juan Manuel Fangio, a previous champion (1951) transferred mid-season from Maserati to Mercedes-Benz for their debut at the French Grand Prix on 4 July 1954. The team had immediate success and recorded a 1-2 victory with Fangio and Karl Kling, as well as the fastest lap, set by Hans Herrmann. Fangio went on to win three more races in 1954, winning the Championship.

Fangio's Mercedes 300 SLR, 1955 Le Mans autographed photo, available in the collection
Fangio's Mercedes 300 SLR, 1955 Le Mans autographed photo, available in the collection

The success continued into the 1955 season, where the same car was used again. The team's drivers, Fangio and the young Stirling Moss, won 6 of the 9 rounds between them, and finished first and second in that year's championship.

Following the 1955 Le Mans disaster, Mercedes-Benz withdrew from all factory-sponsored motorsport.

Mercedes made its return to Formula One in 1994 as an engine supplier to Sauber, with whom they had already enjoyed success in sportscar racing, after 1993 funding their engine partner Ilmor, Mercedes and Sauber announced that the teams engines will be rebadged "Mercedes-Benz" for the 1994 season signaling Mercedes return in participation of the series for the first time since 1955. In 1995 they began supplying engines to the McLaren team, which truly started the resurgence of the brand. Outside Formula One, Mercedes-Benz had increased its shareholding in the Ilmor company in 1996 and took full control nine years later, eventually rebranding as Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains. They have continued to design and build engines for McLaren.

In the opening race of the 1997 Formula One seasonDavid Coulthard produced victory for McLaren and ushered in a new era of success for the British based squad. Coincidentally this was the first race in which McLaren had competed with a silver livery due to West replacing Marlboro, who moved to Ferrari, as title sponsor. The colour drew inevitable comparisons to the Silver Arrows of a previous era, and the nickname was applied to the McLarens. This was a significant result in F1 racing, McLaren's first victory for three seasons and the first win for Mercedes-Benz since Juan Manuel Fangio's success at the 1955 Italian Grand Prix.

Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg running 1&2 in Mercedes' triumphant return to Formula 1
Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg running 1&2 in Mercedes' triumphant return to Formula 1

On November 16, 2009, it was announced that Mercedes would part ways with McLaren, and instead purchase a 75% controlling stake in the 2009 championship-winning team Brawn GP. The team, reimagined as Mercedes GP, debuted at the 2010 Bahrain Grand Prix, with an all-German driver line-up of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher.

Sports Car Racing


It was in 1952 that Mercedes-Benz returned to racing after the war, again with Alfred Neubauer as team manager. Their small and underpowered gull-winged Mercedes-Benz 300SL, won several races in 1952 including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamericana, and did well in other important races such as the Mille Miglia.

24 Hours of Le Mans 1955 large photograph, available in the collection of l'art et l'automobile
24 Hours of Le Mans 1955 large photograph, available in the collection of l'art et l'automobile

Mercedes-Benz was also dominant in sports car racing during the 1950s. The Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR was derived from the W196 Formula One car for use in the 1955 World Sportscar Championship season. At Le Mans that year, a disaster occurred in which a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR collided with another car, killing more than eighty spectators. In fact in the aftermath of the Le Mans disaster, it would be several decades until Mercedes-Benz returned to front line motorsport.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mercedes returned to competition through the tuning company AMG, later to become a Mercedes-Benz subsidiary, which entered the big Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3 V8 sedan in the Spa 24 Hours and the European Touring Car Championship.

In 1985 Mercedes-Benz returned to the World Sportscar Championship as an engine supplier for the privateer Sauber team. The first car produced by this relationship, the Sauber C8 was not particularly successful. However the successor, the C9 won several races, including 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1989.
1986 24 Heures du Mans Original Poster, available in the collection
1986 24 Heures du Mans Original Poster, available in the collection

After the Sauber team parted company with their sponsor Kouros at the end of 1987, Mercedes-Benz increased their involvement with Sauber for the 1988 season to become a factory entrant under the Sauber-Mercedes name. Still using the C9 the team won 5 races but came 2nd to the TWR Jaguar team in the championship. However, 1989 was to be a different story with Sauber-Mercedes winning all but one championship race to become world champions (including coming 1st and 2nd at the24 Hours of Le Mans - all achieved with the C9. For the 1990 World Sportscar Championship season the C9 was replaced by the all-new C11, while the team was renamed Mercedes-Benz. The team dominated the season, again winning all but one race to become world champions.

Mercedes-Benz returned to prominence in sportscar racing in 1997, with the CLK GTR which was entered in the new FIA GT Championship world championship series. In its first year, the CLK GTR won the championship and the drivers' championship. It would again dominate the FIA GT in 1998, and would go on to win its second championship in a row. The CLK GTR would be the last car to win the FIA GT Championship.

In 2011, Mercedes-Benz announced that a GT3 version of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG would be made available for private racing teams. Beginning that year, the SLS AMG GT3 has taken numerous endurance racing wins at the 24 Hours of Dubai24 Hours of Nürburgring and 24 Hours of Spa and has won many other races in national and global GT3 championships. In 2015, the new Mercedes-AMG GT3 was launched to replace the SLS AMG GT3.

IndyCar


In 1994, Al Unser, Jr. won the Indianapolis 500 with a Penske-Mercedes IndyCar. Mercedes-Benz which, realizing that a loophole in the rules for production-based engines would include any pushrod engine, built a very unusual purpose-built pushrod engine with a significant power advantage. This was done knowing that the "forgotten" loophole would be closed immediately after they took advantage of it, and so the engine would in fact be usable only for this single race.

Al Unser, Jr at the Indy 500 in 1994
Al Unser, Jr at the Indy 500 in 1994
Starting from 1995, Mercedes-Benz rebranded the Ilmor engines and achieved six wins in their first full season, also reaching second in the drivers championship powering Al Unser, Jr. After a dry spell in 1996, Mercedes-Benz came back in 1997 with eight wins and winning the Manufacturer's Championship. However, a lack of competitive results in the following seasons and the CART/IRL split meant Mercedes gradually lost interest and the German manufacturer abandoned American racing at the end of the 2000 season, with a total of 18 wins and one driver runner-up finish in the CART championship.

Speed Records

On 28 January 1938, Rudolf Caracciolo set a Land Speed Record of 268 mph over the flying kilometer, Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen was an experimental, high-speed automobile produced in the late 1930s. The streamlined car was derived from the 1937 open-wheel race car Mercedes-Benz W125 Formel-Rennwagen, of which also a streamlined version was raced at the non-championship Avusrennen in Berlin. This Record remained the fastest ever officially timed speed on a public road until broken on 5 November 2017 by Koenigsegg in an Agera RS driven by Niklas Lilja, achieving 276.9 mph on a closed highway in Nevada. It also was the fastest speed ever recorded in Germany until Rico Anthes bested it with a Top Fuel Dragster on the Hockenheimring drag strip.

This record breaking run was made on the Reichs-Autobahn A5 between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, where onlookers were rattled by the brutal boom of the side spewing exhaust stacks as the silver car hurtled past. By nine that morning, Caracciola and team chief Alfred Neubauer were having a celebration breakfast at the Park Hotel in Frankfurt.

Sadly, popular driver Bernd Rosemeyer was killed later the same day when trying to beat that record for Auto Union. This also put an end to the record attempts of Mercedes, even though Hans Stuck later wanted to beat the overall land speed record with the Porsche-designed Mercedes-Benz T80 which was powered by a 3,000 horsepower (2,200 kW) airplane engine.

On August 13–21, 1983 at the Nardo High Speed Track in southern Italy, the new compact-size W201 190 class, sporting a 16-valve engine, built by Cosworth, broke three FIA world records after running almost non-stop in a total of 201 hours, 39 minutes, and 43 seconds—completing 31,000 miles at maximum speed of 153 mph. It went on to become the 190E 2.3-16 touring model.

Mercedes-Benz is currently active in four motorsport categories, Formula Three, DTM, Formula One and GT, even winning the Formula 1 Constructor's and Driver's Championship for the last four years.

Cars by Andy Warhol (W125) Poster, available in the collection of l'art et l'automobile
Cars by Andy Warhol (W125) Poster, available in the collection of l'art et l'automobile

Over the last 40+ years here at l’art et l’automobile, we have accumulated a vast collection of moments and memorabilia from Mercedes-Benz’s illustrious racing and production career, including many of their triumphs and successes over the decades.

Don't forget to head to our store site for more great automotive memorabilia. We have many more items in our gallery, so do not hesitate to contact us if you are looking for something in particular. And as always, Like and Share us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Share a Picture with us on Instagram and catch up on the rest of the blog below.

James Karthauser
Social Media and Development
l’art et l’automobile