Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk applauded Audi’s Auto Union Type 52 sports car based on a concept from the 1930s and presented to the public at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in mid-July.
What Happened: “Awesome,” Musk wrote about the car equipped with a 16-cylinder engine and painted Cellulose Silver. The car, also called the Schnellsportwagen, is based on the concept of the street-legal sports car version of the Auto Union Silver Arrows Grand Prix race cars from the 1930s.
The popular race cars were commissioned by Auto Union AG (formed by the merger of Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer) and developed by the Stuttgart design office of Ferdinand Porsche. The vehicles raced against Mercedes-Benz’s race cars at Grand Prix.
Auto Union AG and the Ferdinand Porsche design office also planned a street-legal sports sedan version expected to be marketed as Schnellsportwagen. The project was called Auto Union Type 52.
The vehicle was expected to be sold to customers for driving in long-distance races. The design sketches of the vehicle were drawn up in 1933 but the project was abandoned in 1935.
Audi eventually showcased the vehicle to the public this year at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The company commissioned Sussex-based Crosthwaite & Gardner to build the vehicle using the existing archives of the 20th-century project and they built it in 2023, with custom-made handcrafted components.
The three-passenger car is over 5 meters long and has an overhead roof and even room for luggage, unlike its Grand Prix sports car siblings.
“The Auto Union Type 52 demonstrates the ingenuity of its creators and the technological innovation of the time. Being able to experience the Schnellsportwagen live is a great pleasure for me," Head of Audi Tradition Stefan Trauf said earlier this month in a statement.
Why It Matters: Musk's Tesla is the world's largest battery electric vehicle seller with 443,956 EVs sold in the second quarter alone. Musk, however, is not against gas vehicles.
“Civilization does need oil & gas for quite some time. I don't think we should demonize an industry that is essential for humanity to function,” Musk said earlier this month.
The CEO has also previously said that climate change risk is "overstated in the near term."
"Climate change risk is overstated in the near-term, but probably accurate in the long-term," Musk wrote on X in June while adding that industries must reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Tesla’s first vehicle was the Roadster, a battery-electric sports car. The company is now developing a new version of the car, slated to start production in 2025. The new car, Musk said earlier this year, can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than 1 second, thanks to a collaboration between Tesla and Musk’s rocket manufacturing company SpaceX.
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Photo courtesy: Audi
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