Audi has built a new V16-engined multi-million-dollar mid-engined supercar… but it looks like a version of the Batmobile made by an eccentric backwoods mechanic using a pile of old aircraft bits.
Looks can be deceptive though and this one-off project by Audi is a celebration one of the most important cars in the brand’s back catalog. The Auto Union Lucca was, in its day, the fastest road-going car in the world. You are looking at a cool 203-mph (326.975-km/h) supercar that was built an amazing 90 years ago.
The original one-off road-speed record-breaker was lost in World War Two, so Audi has spent an undisclosed seven-figure fortune recreating it. After three years work by specialist historic restorers, the 'new' Lucca has just been unveiled – with the promise it will perform at the UK’s Goodwood Festival of Speed in July (9-12).
That will be something worth seeing because this car is an extraordinary beast. The sound of its huge supercharged six-liter V16 will probably be heard across much of southern England.
The Lucca has been re-created by Crosthwaite & Gardiner, a high-end specialist workshop in leafy Sussex, also in southern England. How high-end? Well among its claims to fame are holding the biggest stock of Bugatti parts in the world and normally manufacture brand new engines for historic race cars like Maseratis and Jaguars.
The Lucca must have been a daunting job, even for C&G. With the original car and most of the technical drawings and specs missing, it had to be entirely built from scratch, mainly from old photographs and a few old 1930s engineering drawings.
Every panel and component had to be handmade. Crosthwaite & Gardiner report that fitting the streamlined bodywork, cockpit canopy and tail fin over the wooden frame was particularly labor-intensive.
Like me you might wonder why it looks, well, sort of unfinished. It turns out that German racers of the era were stripped of paint down to bare metal to save weight (and were known as 'Silver Arrows'). Even then the metal was sanded finely and in the Lucca’s case the radiator and spoked wheels were fitted with covers for improved aerodynamics. Fuel? That’s a handy vintage mix of 50% methanol, 40% premium unleaded and 10% toluene.
Audi hasn't said anything about the potential speed of the newly revived car yet. The supercharged V16 is rated at 513 hp and the car only weighs just over 2,000 lb (960 kg), around the same as a Mazda MX-5. Those involved may not want to push their expensive retro recreation to the limit but it is certainly got the potential to embarrass plenty of more modern machines.
It was named Lucca incidentally because Auto Union star driver Hans Stuck set its record-breaking speed on a stretch of straight autostrada near the Italian town in 1935. The car was nicknamed 'Rennlimousine' or 'racing sedan' at the time. It was the prize creation of Auto Union and its designer Ferdinand Porsche in a long-standing ding-dong battle to be faster than Mercedes. Auto Union went on to become Audi, of course, which is now part of the VW empire.
Source: Audi
