[ad_1]
What it isn’t, undoubtedly: A Porsche. What it isn’t, principally: A Volkswagen. What it isn’t, virtually actually: a courier automotive designed for the Luftwaffe. As an alternative, the 1947 Volkhart V2 is a lot extra: a hand-built aluminum-bodied one-off constructed on a wartime Volkswagen chassis to check superior aerodynamic designs, executed by a man who beforehand drove rocket-powered vehicles, which was as soon as thought misplaced to historical past, and which can now head to public public sale for the primary time. (Phew.)
The story begins with Kurt Julius Carl Ernst Volkhart (no relation to our personal Kurt Ernst), the son of a German painter who, within the early Teenagers, determined to journey to the US to turn out to be a race automotive driver. Then, after his return to Germany, he added car engineer to his resume. By the late Twenties, he ended up at Opel, the place he took over the event of RAK1, a two-stage rocket-powered race automotive that he drove to about 80 miles per hour throughout a closed-track demonstration. The succeeding RAK2 managed to finest that mark by a large margin, however Volkhart had break up with Fritz von Opel by then to construct his personal rocket automotive, the Volkhart-R1, which he demonstrated a handful of occasions earlier than returning to traditional competitors vehicles.
The Volkhart predecessors
Not lengthy after, he linked up with Reinhard von Koenig-Fachsenfeld, a patent clerk, beginner aerodynamicist, and Paul Jaray disciple whose concepts intrigued Volkhart. Collectively they labored on four-wheeled prototypes and racing machines for Dangerous Gotesberg-based bike producer Imperia, together with a minimum of two rear-engined or mid-engined streamliners with absolutely impartial suspensions. One, an open-wheeled closed-cockpit racer, was dubbed the VR1. One other, an envelope-bodied closed-cockpit sports activities automotive, debuted on the Berlin Motor Present in 1935 with a 750-cc radial three-cylinder two-stroke engine, however by no means reached manufacturing. All of the work that Koenig-Fachsenfeld and Volkhart put into the streamliners bankrupted the corporate, leaving them with out an outlet for his or her concepts, for just a few years a minimum of.
As Nazi Germany equipped for struggle within the late Thirties, Volkhart was capable of promote his and Koenig-Fachsenfeld’s streamliner thought to the Luftwaffe, which thought-about it for a high-speed courier automotive, based on an article that Hanspeter Bröhl wrote for Austro Classic. The streamliner, which Dusseldorf-based Dunker constructed and which Volkhart dubbed the V1, used a mid-engine format with a Ford Eifel 1172-cc inline four-cylinder engine and a extra formed streamliner physique with absolutely enclosed wheels. Dunker delivered the V1 in 1938 or 1939, and materials was put aside for a minimum of a pair extra prototypes, however Bröhl wrote that it was Albert Speer himself, Hitler’s Reich Minister of Armaments and Warfare Manufacturing, who spiked the undertaking.
Volkhart tinkered with V1 into 1941, including a fin off the sloping decklid, then that very same yr ordered a KdF Wagen chassis (chassis number 2-033683), full with 24hp 1131-cc air-cooled flat-four engine, intending to construct one other streamliner on the Volkswagen Beetle-predecessor platform. Whether or not this was one other Luftwaffe-commissioned car or grew out of Volkhart’s resolve to see the undertaking by way of to manufacturing is just not clear. Regardless of the case, Volkhart—like many different German residents who ordered their KdFs—wasn’t capable of take supply of his chassis instantly and needed to wait till 1944, at which period he stashed it away within the barracks on the Kassel-Rothwesten Airfield. He additionally suffered one other setback across the similar time he ordered the chassis when, based on Bröhl, Volkhart and Koenig-Fachsenfeld had a falling out, with the latter promoting his patent on the streamlined form to BMW and the previous decided to construct the streamliner regardless.
Development of the Volkhart V2
He did not get his probability to truly construct the automotive till 1947, when, regardless of a ban on constructing civilian autos, intrigued British Military officers permitted him to retrieve the KdF Wagen chassis and organized a provide of aluminum sheet steel. Sagitta agreed to fund the prototype’s construct, which Volkhart turned over to Helmut Fuchs and Hans Daum. Whereas the ensuing physique form has since been in comparison with Porsche’s Beetle-based 60K10 and even Saab’s 1946 UrSaab prototype, it extra derives its design and plenty of options from the Dunker-built V1, from the sloping deck to the rear-hinged doorways and the absolutely enclosed wheels. Based on Volkhart, who performed wind tunnel testing on the entire automotive and on picket fashions of it, the ensuing V2’s coefficient of drag was simply 0.165, which might have allowed the 24-hp engine to push the automotive to a little bit greater than 85 miles per hour. The whole weight got here to 1,940 kilos. Daum painted it a matte lime inexperienced, reportedly the one extensively accessible paint coloration on the time.
(As Bröhl wrote, Volkhart hadn’t forgotten about his former colleague’s determination to promote the patent to BMW. In 1951, he made a proper and legally binding declaration that the V2 was his personal design and mental property, although he credited the forward-sloping bow form side of it to Koenig-Fachsenfeld and acknowledged BMW’s possession of the patent.)
Hugo Tigges, who was concerned within the construct of the V2, bought the finished automotive and drove it till 1953, when he parked it in his yard and used it as a hen coop. That is the place it remained for a few years, till Hans Daum’s son, Helmut—who recalled it fondly and was aghast at its remedy by Tigges—traded a set of tires for the automotive and put it again on the highway. He recommissioned it from its unique inexperienced to blue with a white roof (later made sky blue) and drove it over the subsequent 10 years, utilizing newer Beetle components to maintain it operating, earlier than he, too, parked it.
Resurrecting the Volkhart V2
Based on Bröhl, Daum resurrected the V2 as soon as extra in 1999, this time to repaint it British racing inexperienced and restore it again to its unique configuration, right down to a Volkswagen-sourced alternative engine and transmission with January 1944 date codes (engine quantity 1-0194928). In 2011, an Austrian Porsche collector purchased the automotive. A few years later, that collector allowed Volkswagen to put it within the firm’s wind tunnel to see if Volkhart’s claimed aerodynamic effectivity was right. The assessments, based on Volkswagen, returned a coefficient of drag of 0.217 in opposition to a frontal space of two.10 sq. meters. By comparability, the KdF and Beetle design has a coefficient of drag of 0.48 and the Volkswagen Type 2 splittie measured 0.44. Quite a few idea and experimental vehicles have recorded decrease coefficients of drag, however not many manufacturing vehicles have executed so within the many years since; Tesla’s Mannequin S has a 0.208 coefficient of drag whereas the supremely slippery GM EV1 and Volkswagen XL1 are available in at 0.19.
Since then, the V2 has been re-restored, this time in a silver metallic paint, with the mirrors, flip alerts, and a few items of trim eliminated to intensify the automotive’s strains. Bonhams, which has consigned the V2 to its Retromobile public sale, has not positioned a public pre-auction estimate on the automotive. The Bonhams Retromobile public sale will happen February 2 at Paris’s Grand Palais Éphémère. For extra data, go to bonhams.com.
[ad_2]
