Audi Just Made A Three Seat F1 Car For The Road

More home-going race cars! What do you want if you can see the square steering wheel? The Auto Union Type 52, or Schnellsportswagen. Fire it up, Tomo. Oh, stalled it. A 1930s supercharged V16 F1 racing car for the road. A car Audi tradition have brought back from the dead. And it's fascinating. But first, we must rewind time to the 1930s, and one of the most exciting periods of motorsport ever. The era of the Silver Arrows. Needing some public exposure for the merger of Saxony's four automotive companies, Audi, DKW, Porsche and Wanderer, the newly formed Auto Union wanted a way of promoting itself to the public. So it headed for the very highest level, Grand Prix racing. Just like the 2026 F1 season, 1934 saw a big regulation shift. There was a crippling 750kg weight limit introduced, meaning the aged newies of the time had to find ingenious, lightweight solutions rather than rely on monstrously heavy, powerful engines. Auto Union decided to opt for a mid-engine layout, thus paving the way for just about every successful Grand Prix racer since. With big V16 engines, these F1 cars of the day would swap downfalls for low-drag bodywork, then head out onto the roads in a bid to become the fastest cars on the planet. Or add more wheels and compete in hill climbs. But there was one design that never made it to reality. A road car. Yep, just like the Aston Martin Valkyrie or AMG One, which wants to put F1 on the streets, so did the folks at Auto Union. And this weird-looking thing does exactly that. The Schnell Sportswagen. Designed in 1933 by Ferdinand Porsche, yes, that Porsche, it was a racy grand tourer for the road. Or to compete in motorsport like the Mille Miglia or Le Mans. But it never happened. So using whatever drawings, documents and schematics they could find, Audi and racing gurus Crosswaith and Gardner have spent a decade making it a reality. And it's beautiful. Completely and utterly handmade. With rolled steel panels, a mad engine, all finished in the iconic cellulose silver. The easiest thing is probably to walk around and point things out, which may take a while, as it's absolutely massive. Let's start at the front, where you've got the iconic Auto Union grille. But where the Grand Prix cars were open-wheeled, we've got some bodywork. And it's this beautifully curvaceous pontoon fairing and some very gawky headlights. Is it pretty? No. But don't worry, because this car gets better and better the further you go back. Starting with the wheels. 21-inch knock-offs. Aren't they beautiful? It looks like you should be in Texas, swanging. Behind them, drum brakes. Not sure how they'll do on circuit. But the chains and suspension. Where the Grand Prix cars had a friction damper, these have hydraulic dampers. Better for road handling. Now, you may wonder what's under here. It's the boot. I know that there's a lot of space back there, but this is what you get. And there's the oil cooler and the most fabulous toolbox you've ever seen. You thought your BMW's toolbox was cool. All of these tools in here are completely handmade and absolutely stunning. Come inside, three seats. You weren't expecting that. Especially a central seating position. Gordon Murray and his McLaren F1 and T50. Not as revolutionary as you think, because they were doing it in the 1930s. But with all the documentation lost, there wasn't actually an interior design for this car. So the guys at Audi Tradition have gone and made their own. Using techniques that were being used in the 1930s. That's why they've taken wood that was used from the luxury cars from Audi's group at the time. All the seats have been made with horse hair, just like they would back in the day. And all the leather is the same as it would be in the 1930s. We've got a huge steering wheel, with I think the heaviest steering in history. These beautiful rev counter and speedo, which are the size of plates. And the pedals. They're the same as the Grand Prix car. A five-speed gearbox. But where the race cars, they didn't have a handbrake. So Audi Tradition have had to think, what would a 1930s handbrake look like for a race car like this? That's what they've come up with. Practicality. Something also considered with two spare wheels. Just like a Dakar car. Useful if you're competing in the Mille Miglia or going down to Devon in this thing. But where the race cars would have the fuel cell, quite dangerously, behind the driver, they've had to put it in the floor. Because there's something rather impressive and large in the back. The engine. A V16 with a supercharger attached. Look at the size of it. It's massive. Six litres in capacity with around 520 horsepower. In the designs and plans by Ferdinand Porsche, he wanted the smaller Auto Union's four-litre engine with around 200 horsepower. But now Audi have made this a reality, they thought, we may as well give it a bit more power. We like that. And does it look absolutely amazing in these surroundings? It's like it's in an aeroplane's fuselage. And we could look at this car all day. It's absolutely stunning. But what's it like on the move? So here we are in the Schnell Sportswagen. I'm not driving. No one's allowed to drive. This is Tomo. Oh, open it up. Oh, it goes. No one is allowed to drive the car apart from Tomo because it's priceless. We're going rather quickly. The thing goes, doesn't it, Tomo? Tomo doesn't speak English. As you can see, it's got the world's heaviest steering and heaviest clutch. You've got to be really careful. I saw the gears being crunched there. As we try and take the first corner here in the Navara circuit, where we have to go off the circuit because the steering lock is so poor. Look at this man work. I'll give him a hand. Pedal to the metal. In period, these things could do up to 250 miles an hour. We're not going for that today because I don't know whether the tyres would take it, if I would take it, but it's getting hot in here. We've got that V16 pumping all of that heat out, and it's running on methanol, super unleaded, toluene, anything that it could basically get into it to make power. But open that engine up and that V16. It's so smooth. It's so creamy for something that in a race car is so angry. We've got mufflers in this, so it's a lot quieter, but also we've got drum brakes, which are struggling to work, and this poor man is sweating. It is extremely tight in this cabin for a car that is so, so large. I'm having to hug the boy. We're under steering off the circuit. We're in an Audi, but it's hot, it's sweaty, it's not easy to drive. It's the same as an Aston Martin Valkyrie, but is it great to put an F1 car design on the road? Yes, that's why we love an Aston Martin Valkyrie. That's why we love this Auto Union Type 52. It's amazing that they've made this car 90 years after it was designed. An amazing triumph from Audi and Auto Union. If you can see this car ever, try and see it at good professional speeds. It's incredible. So there you have it, the Auto Union Type 52, an utterly mad machine that proves that Formula 1 cars for the road are a great idea. It's just a shame we had to wait nearly 100 years for it. In fact, it's quite surprising it took those guys so long to rethink the idea.