Mikey24
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Auto Union World Championship
Auto Union AG was a German manufacturer that was founded in 1932 by merging four previous manufacturer's together. These were:
Zschopauer Motorenwerke J. S. Rasmussen (DKW)
Audiwerke AG Zwickau
Horchwerke AG Zwickau
Wanderer
The company was later established in 1936 in the city of Chemnitz, during the Great Depression.
Auto Union's specialist racing department, Horch, developed and built Grand Prix racing cars that were eventually raced in competitively under the Auto Union AG name. Four types of Grand Prix cars were built between the years 1933 and 1939 - Type A, Type B, Type C and Type D.
The early cars were fitted with V16 engines which were later replaced by V12 engines that could develop almost 550 horsepower! The cars were known to produce a lot of oversteer, and were also known to be able to wheel-spin at speeds over 100 mph. This made the car difficult to handle. These attributes were cleverly implemented into Granturismo 6 by Polyphony Digital, the game's creator.
From all of the racing cars built, a special streamlined car was built using the Type C chassis. Auto Union wanted to break the land speed record. Bernd Rosemeyer, one of the top Grand Prix drivers of the 1930's, was acquired to drive the Auto Union Streamliner. On his first run he set the record of 268 mph along the stretch of Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt (eventually beaten slightly by Rudolf Caracciola). He had two more attempts at setting the record. But before he went for his third run he was told the wind was starting to pick up, but he still pursued his run. At 11:47 a.m. on January 28, 1938, Rosemeyer's car inexplicably swerved to the left into the median of the highway and then veered off to the right, off of the road before hitting a bridge enbankment and throwing Rosemeyer out of the car as it somersaulted. Rosemeyer was unfortunately killed in the accident. Below is a video about the terrible tragedy.
The Auto Union streamliner of 1937 has been in the Granturismo series since the fourth installment and continues to be a very underused car among popular players.
After doing a little research into the game's version of the car, I've seen a lot of people struggling with using the car but I've found some comments on YouTube videos and different forums, saying: "It's completely different from any normal road car or racing car, it's like learning to ride a bicycle all over again."
And so, with this thread I am introducing a new series to GTPlanet, which will implement the use of this historic record-breaking vehicle of the 1930's. All series information can be found on post #2.
