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RAK? Well, it's short for "rakete" - rocket...
Back in the 1920s and 1930s, Opel had a brief flirtation with solid propellant. I guess it was the done thing in 1930s Germany.
Step 1 was the Opel-RAK - or RAK-1 as it's helpfully known now. This was based on an Opel 7/34 factory race car, with a selection of Friedrich Wilhelm Sander's rockets strapped to the back. After a series of tests, it eventually reached 62mph/100km/h.
Later RAK models ran on rails and crashed (RAK3) or exploded (RAK4), while the RAK1 rocket plane - the world's first - first exploded and, when built into a new plane, crashed. But it's the RAK2 we're interested in. Why? Because it looks like this:
Based on a cut down Opel 10/40 and powered by 24 of Sander's powder rockets, RAK2 produced 6000kg of thrust. It carried enough black powder propellant to level residential buildings. As in a neighbourhood of them.
Driven by Fritz von Opel himself (grandson of company founder Adam) the RAK2 reached 148mph/238km/h at the Berlin-AVUS speedway on May 23rd 1928...
Note the wings used in that run to keep RAK2 on the ground! Who thought aerodynamics in race cars was a modern invention?
Of course, being rocket propelled it's kinda hard to throttle and it has a maximum fuel range of about 2 minutes, so there's limited use in a racing game, but hey... Gran Turismo is about improving reality, not slavishly aping it!
Back in the 1920s and 1930s, Opel had a brief flirtation with solid propellant. I guess it was the done thing in 1930s Germany.
Step 1 was the Opel-RAK - or RAK-1 as it's helpfully known now. This was based on an Opel 7/34 factory race car, with a selection of Friedrich Wilhelm Sander's rockets strapped to the back. After a series of tests, it eventually reached 62mph/100km/h.
Later RAK models ran on rails and crashed (RAK3) or exploded (RAK4), while the RAK1 rocket plane - the world's first - first exploded and, when built into a new plane, crashed. But it's the RAK2 we're interested in. Why? Because it looks like this:
Driven by Fritz von Opel himself (grandson of company founder Adam) the RAK2 reached 148mph/238km/h at the Berlin-AVUS speedway on May 23rd 1928...
Of course, being rocket propelled it's kinda hard to throttle and it has a maximum fuel range of about 2 minutes, so there's limited use in a racing game, but hey... Gran Turismo is about improving reality, not slavishly aping it!
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