Auto Union Is A No-Sale At Bonhams Monterey

The history of the notorious Silver Arrow racers parallels that of the nation which bore its birth. In the years leading up to WWII, Adolf Hitler was bent on world conquest – not just on the battlefield, but on the race track as well. Convinced that motor racing was the perfect venue to exhibit what he viewed as Germany's superiority, the Fuhrer commissioned Germany's top engineers at both Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union to develop a generation of advanced racing machines that would later become known as the Silver Arrows. The 1938 Auto Union D-Type was Hitler's favorite.

The cars reigned victorious in the 1930s, but with the outbreak of the war, racing in Europe ground to a halt. The following decade Nazi Germany lay in ruins, Hitler was dead, and the Soviets seized the D-Types from the Auto Union factory in East Germany. With an Iron Curtain cutting off contact between the Soviet Bloc and the Western world, enthusiasts and historians were convinced the Silver Arrows remained intact somewhere in the Communist empire, but all the while they were being brutally dismantled. Although many of the Mercedes pre-war racers survived, few of the Auto Unions did. Only three of these D-Types are known to remain intact.

Chassis 19, was painstakingly restored to original condition, and was set to hit the auction block at Christie's two years ago until it was withdrawn at the last minute due to unanswered questions over its heritage and provenance. With the questions answered and its pedigree assured, Bonhams is now offering this extremely rare and most desirable piece of automotive history at its upcoming auction at the Quail Lodge this coming August, where it is expected to fetch in excess of $8 million. But with previous estimates having placed it closer to $12 million, it stands a real chance of breaking the $12.2 million record set by the 1957 Ferrari 250 Testarossa at the RM Auction in Maranello just last month

...continuing saga

Auto Union Is A No-Sale At Bonhams Monterey

How About a Porsche Boxster?

I always did like the looks of these:
Boxster Images




I remember some early conversion work where a guy was taking out the gas engines and making them electric. Now I think Porsche itself is making an electric model....likely expensive

There are also some body-aero kits for the older cars

I think I saw some 'conversion' one for 49K

Forget Face Detection....now the car will recoqnize the other end

Forget face detection - this Japanese car seat can tell who's sitting on it

I've been saying these **** cars are just getting too complicated...next thing you know they'll tell us when we need to wipe our a__

Just had to put one pic with this link. That is a sexy looking car

They've got some hot designers/stylist.

Electric Mini

I know now that BMW is coming out with an electric Mini, but I remember reading about some such experiments back in 2006-7

"A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW's Mini Cooper. The PML Mini QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors — one on each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km).

Working in partnership with our customer, Synergy Innovations, we set out to demonstrate what our electric wheel technology is capable of. We simply took a standard BMW Mini One, discarded the engine, the disc brakes, the wheels, and the gearbox. These components were replaced by four of our electric wheels, a lithium polymer battery, a large ultra capacitor, a very small ICE with generator (so small it almost fits alongside the spare wheel), an energy management system and a sexy in-car display module."

Electric Mini: 0-60 in 4 Seconds: It Has Motors In Its Wheels : TreeHugger
Protean Electric


One Year of Driving a Mini-e Electric
http://gm-volt.com/2010/06/14/one-year-of-driving-the-mini-e-electric-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqQVI--U1Uwcar/


Electric Car Beats Ferrari....and Porsche
Electric Car beats Ferrari!!! - YouTube

....and the originally Mini's can be artifully stylized
Pictures of Mini Cars - great Mini photos