Mercedes C111 (x6)
Manufacturers mark significant anniversaries at the 30th Techno Classica Essen
Aspectacular array of Mercedes’ experimental C111 sports cars crowned this year’s Techno Classica Essen. The largest indoor classic car show in the world celebrated its 30th anniversary, prompting other manufacturers to trumpet landmark models with big birthdays. Porsche remembered 50 years of the 914, and BMW four decades of its M-cars, but none looked quite so futuristic as the record-breaking supercar from Stuttgart. Speed-record holders were also a recurring theme elsewhere in the show.
Mercedes-benz C111s
‘I must admit, it isn’t actually all of the C111s on show here – 11 were built in total – but this selection represents the evolution of the concept, and it’s the first time that so many have been shown together outside of the museum,’ said Andreas Hoch of Mercedes-benz Classic.
The six cars marking the ultimately doomed plan to build a mid-rotary-engined Mercedes sports car included the 1966 SLX design study. This rolling bodyshell, built without an interior, was a wooden model created by Mercedes stylists Giorgio Battistella and Paul Bracq. No engine was specified at this stage – the decision to create the Wankelengined C111 was made three years later.
After rejecting the Wankel rotary engine on reliability and fuel-consumption grounds, and once the 1973 oil crisis killed off the possibility of a V8 version, the car was reworked as a test-bed for new Mercedes engines. This resulted in the three silver Rekordwagen of 1976-79. The C111-IID housed the five-cylinder turbodiesel that would power the S-class, its 155mph-average 64-hour test at Nardò proving its combination of reliability, refinement and power. The project culminated (via the low-drag 0.183Cd C111-III) in the C111-IV, fitted with a 500bhp version of the 4.5-litre V8 from the
forthcoming 450SEL, which achieved an average lap speed of 250.958mph at Nardò in May 1979.
Porsche 912s
Porsche specialist restorer Koehler displayed a remarkable pair of barn finds on its stand – the two earliest surviving examples of the 912. ‘We were really lucky with this one,’ said restorer Guido Bartsch of the second-oldest car. ‘It was found in a farmhouse in the USA. We had no idea whether it retained its original colour – it had been repainted seven or eight times in different colours over the years – but when we polished those layers back, we found the first coat of Bali Blue underneath, next to the original layer of primer. We found four different colours on top of it. It’s all there, but restoration is going to be a very delicate process because we want to bring that original paint back to light all over the car.
‘It’s chassis 0013, confirmed as the secondoldest 912 in existence by the Porsche Museum. But this one,’ he said gesturing to the less complete car alongside, ‘is the oldest. Another barn find, found on a German farm. It’s chassis 007, built on the very first day of 912 production. It’s not actually being restored at the moment – we’re just showing it here to demonstrate what we can do.
Renault 20 Turbo Prototype
a turbocharged four-wheel-drive rally car, based on the 20, from Renault’s parts bin. The Marreau brothers combined the optional four-wheel-drive system from the Trafic van with the engine from the 18 Turbo within the 20’s bodyshell.
‘It was entered in the 1981 Paris-dakar Rally, driven by the Marreaus – it led for most of it and won three stages outright,’ said Poschet. ‘Sadly, it crashed on the very last stage, rolled and needed repairing. It eventually finished, but not in time to remain on the leaderboard.
‘It’s been restored, but you can see evidence of that roll in the passenger door – it’s steel, but all the others are bespoke weight-saving aluminium. It was crushed in the roll and they had to salvage a replacement from a production car in Senegal.
‘Two other 20 Turbo 4x4 rally cars were built to the Marreau specifications, one winning the Dakar in 1982, but this is the earliest prototype.’
Lancia Aurelia B53
‘The engine and gearbox have been worked on, but we’re focusing on other projects at the moment, so progress on this car is very slow.’ This Renault rally prototype, recently unearthed from a private Belgian collection, could well be proof that Renault arrived at the four-wheel drive turbocharged concept before Audi. ‘It predated the earliest Quattro, but didn’t come from Renault’s own factory, and is a total one-off,’ said Koen Poschet of Albion Sports & Collectors’ Cars.
Dating from 1980, it came about when Renault approached Paris-dakar rally veterans Claude and Bernard Marreau and asked them to create It’s the first time this unique Lancia has been shown in Europe since the Fifties. ‘It’s a one-off, built for the 1953 Turin Motor Show by Allemano to show what it could do,’ explained Noël De Block of Classic Car Service Restorations. It’s the work of Giovanni Michelotti – who was resident stylist at
Techno Classica Essen continued
Allemano at the time – before later setting up a design house under his own name in 1959.
‘It was restored 15 years ago, and has always been this colour – this is how it would have appeared at the show,’ said De Block. ‘After the show it was bought by an Italian owner, but since then it has been in collections in the United States, Turkey and now Belgium.’
Buchmann BB specials
This trio of Eighties specials, for sale after a lifetime in collections, took pride of place on Springbok Sportwagen’s stand, showcasing Frankfurt coachbuilder Ranier Buchmann’s BB company.
‘With its eight-piece folding metal hardtop, this Mercedes-benz 500SEC Magic Top predates Mercedes’ own SLK by several years,’ said Springbok owner Frank Jacob. ‘Of course if you ask Mercedes, they’ll claim they invented it, but there is no doubt that they knew about BB’S work.’ The conversion alone cost DM200,000.
The second Buchmann conversion on show was a Porsche 930 Turbo, reworked with a flatter nose, 928-style pop-forward headlights and a wider body with flared rear wheelarches and air scoops. ‘The Porsche belonged to the royal family of Kuwait, which registered it there in 1980, but it spent its entire life in the parking lot of the Hilton Hotel in London,’ Jacob explained. ‘It was ordered via Porsche itself – Porsche contracted out some of its Sonderwunsch (‘special wishes’) personalisation programme via BB. It’s also got an intercooled engine putting out 375bhp, although that wasn’t the work of BB. Which brings me to the third car in our collection – the 1986 Volkswagen Polo Carat. Buchmann only carried out interior and bodywork design, not engine tuning, so despite having expensively reworked body panelling and a completely redesigned interior in blue suede with a DINFO electronic dashboard, it only has the standard 75bhp engine!’
Italcorsa Tarf II
Released from the Louwman Museum in The Hague, this spectacular 1951 speed-record machine was part of a display promoting the new European National Motor Museums project. This is a co-operation programme between Louwman, Autoworld in Brussels, the Schlumpf Collection in Mulhouse, Museo Nazionale Dell’automobile in Turin, and Britain’s very own National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, formed with a view to pooling resources and circulating certain cars from their collections.
Conceived by Piero Taruffi, this car – the second of his Italcorsa bisiluro (‘twin-torpedo’) cars – featured a 1.7-litre, 290bhp supercharged Maserati engine in the left-hand boom driving the rear wheels via chains. Taruffi sat in the right, steering the car with a pair of control sticks because there was no room in the narrow cockpit for a steering wheel. The car reached a maximum speed of 186.411mph on the Via Appia outside Rome in 1951, and also broke class lap records at Montlhéry and Monza.
Volkswagen Nardò
This Volkswagen supercar of 2001, making its classic-show debut, was another Nardò veteran, and responsible for a new generation of supercars. ‘It set three world and six class records at Nardò,’ explained Volkswagen Classic spokesperson Sascha Oliver Neumann. ‘An average speed of 310.99km/h (193.24mph), 0-100km/h (0-62mph) in less than 3.5 seconds, and in February 2002 it set a 24-hour world record of 322.89km/h (200.64mph). These Nardò records still stand today.
‘It helped to develop the W12 engine. It was a 5998cc unit based around two VR6 cylinder heads as used in the Corrado. The first production W12s went in the Phaeton, then – with some modifications for refinement – a new generation of Bentleys. But fundamentally, it is a pair of Volkswagen Corrado VR6 engines combined.’
Prosport LM3000
Despite its looks, this car, freshly unearthed from a Danish collection, has never been raced. ‘It was made in England in 1992, designed by Lee Noble for Prosport Engineering around a Cosworth-tuned Ford 2.9-litre V6,’ said Tommy Schacksen of Cccars. ‘A Danish man bought it with the intention of preparing it for his sons to race, but ran out of money before it reached the track, so other than a single test-drive, it’s been in his garage ever since.’
The Prosport was intended as a Group C2-style machine for a one-make race series in the wake of Group C’s demise, but grids always struggled for numbers – at the Snetterton round an announcement was reputedly made that the prerace briefing was taking place in a phone box – and the cars were accepted into British multi-marque Gt-racing classes instead, a situation which makes them an extremely rare sight outside the UK.