In 1935, a car called the Auto Union Lucca screamed down a stretch of Italian autostrada near the Tuscan city of Lucca and hit 203 mph. Driver Hans Stuck set a new record for the fastest car on a public road, and the machine that made it possible promptly disappeared into history. Both Lucca Silver Arrow prototypes that were ever built raced at the AVUS Ring in May 1935, failed to finish, and were eventually lost altogether. For nearly 90 years, Audi — the company that grew directly from Auto Union’s roots — had nothing to show for it. That gap has now been filled. Audi Tradition recently unveiled a complete, hand-crafted recreation of the Lucca, built over three years by British specialists Crosthwaite & Gardiner, and unveiled it in the very Italian town that gave the car its name.
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Sixteen Cylinders, No Synchromesh
The recreation is powered by a mid-mounted 6.0-litre supercharged V16 motor, driving the rear wheels through a five-speed, non-synchronised manual gearbox. It’s the kind of setup that demands full commitment from the driver, with no synchromesh to smooth out clumsy shifts. The bodywork is hand-beaten aluminium, keeping weight down to around 2,116 pounds in the spirit of the original. Crosthwaite & Gardiner have built the same engine configuration for other Auto Union recreations, where it produces around 520 horsepower on 50 percent methanol.
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The Road to Audi
To understand why this car matters so much to Audi, you have to go back to 1932. Germany was deep in the Great Depression, and four automakers — Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer — were all losing money. They merged in 1932 to form Auto Union AG, immediately becoming Germany’s second-largest car manufacturer. Each brand kept its name and its market segment, but engineering resources were pooled under one roof. The four interlocking rings that symbolised their union are still on every Audi today. After World War II, the company rebuilt itself in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, eventually being taken over by Volkswagen in 1964 and formally reborn as Audi in 1968.
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The Race For The Fastest Car in The World
The Lucca wasn’t built purely for sport. It was built to win a propaganda battle. Mercedes-Benz had set a public road speed record in Hungary in late 1934, and Auto Union needed it back. The two German manufacturers spent the mid-1930s locked in a ferocious rivalry — not just on the Grand Prix circuit but in annual “record weeks” on newly built autobahn stretches, each trying to outrun the other. Stuck’s 203 mph run in 1935 was the opening shot. The duel escalated rapidly, with Caracciola and Bernd Rosemeyer trading records at over 250 mph before Rosemeyer was killed in a crash in 1938.Â
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Auto Union’s public road record eventually fell as speeds climbed through the late 1930s. Today, the outright world land speed record stands at 763 mph, set by the jet-powered ThrustSSC in 1997. The Lucca’s rebuilt recreation will make its dynamic debut at Goodwood Festival of Speed this July, ninety years after the original blazed the way.
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