Karl Ludvigsen digs in the archives to tell the tale of the amazing Austro Daimlers
Ferdinand Porsche designed and built his first Grand Prix racing cars when he was managing director of Austria’s Austro Daimler in the early 1920s. They were advanced machines that had few chances in period to flaunt their capabilities
Coming out of World War 1, Ferdinand Porsche was in complete charge of Austro Daimler, one of the greatest and most versatile manufacturing companies of the former Austrohungarian Empire. Now his factory at Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna, had to reach out to world markets from an Austria shrunken to a tenth of its former size. A great believer in the merits of motor sports for both technology and publicity, Porsche started right away on the design and construction of racing cars.
The pinnacle of the sport, best known for its competitiveness and demonstration of high technology, was Grand Prix racing. First contested in 1906 as the French Grand Prix, GP racing continued to 1914, the first time that engine displacement was used to create a common technical format for competitors. As a result the 1914 race among 4½litre cars was ‘notable for a constant and fierce international and inter-company duel,’ wrote Laurence Pomeroy, Jr. The world waited eagerly for the sport’s post-war resumption.
Although new post-war rules set a 3.0-litre engine-size limit for 1920, GP racing did not resume until 1921, when both France and Italy hosted Grands Prix. To create a GP competitor for Austro Daimler, Ferdinand Porsche built a sixcylinder engine of 2993cc, measuring 74 x 116 mm. Its single-ignition twin-overhead-cam engine had a king-shaft drive to its camshafts at the rear of the block, next to the clutch. Twin side-draft 48mm Zenith carburettors had dual float chambers to assure consistent flow of alcohol-based racing fuel.
Although wide enough to carry the mandatory riding mechanic, the new racer’s frame and body were kept as narrow as possible to reduce drag. Its cooling-air inlet was a narrow vertical oval. Porsche’s aerodynamic advisor was Igo Etrich, the airplane designer whose tips helped Austro
Daimler dominate the 1910 Prince Heinrich competition. Slots in the sides of the tail allowed a spare wheel to be stowed horizontally. This took up space usually used for a fuel tank, which Porsche placed low under the car’s cockpit and tail to reduce its centre of gravity.
This handsome racing car received the ADM-R designation, which suggested that the racer had something in common with Austro Daimler’s production six-cylinder ADM, although in fact it was a unique design. Said to produce 120bhp at the high crank speed of 5500rpm, the ADM-R was giving power comparable to that of such 3.0litre Grand Prix rivals as the Fiats and Duesenbergs. However, the lateness of the car’s completion and the paucity of events for it meant that the ADM-R wasn’t raced in anger by Austro Daimler.
One such ADM-R – probably only one was completed – was imported to England by George Newman in 1926. From then to 1930 it competed successfully on the banked oval at Brooklands, where its maximum lap speed was urged upward from 110 to 118 mph. ‘I used to think this A-D was one of the best-looking cars at the track,’ wrote Brooklands historian William Boddy, ‘with its handsomely cowled radiator, slightly staggered seats, long tail and the (mandatory) silencer beneath a tunnel on the (left) side of the body, with the compulsory fish-tail protruding.’
New Grand Prix rules for 1922 cut allowable engine capacity to 2.0 litres. Fortuitously the ADM-R provided an ideal basis for a new GP Austro Daimler, the ADS II-R. Using the same dimensions of 74 x 116 mm for four cylinders gave 1996cc, perfect for the 1922 rules. Also mandated were a minimum weight of 1433lbs and bodies able to carry two passengers.
The bigger-engined car’s chassis was carried over to the 1922 2.0-litre. With two fewer cylinders to carry, Ferdinand Porsche shortened the ADS II-R’S wheelbase from 110.2 to 108.3 inches while keeping its track of 51.2 inches. In plan view the frame rails were straight from cowl to rear and gently tapering toward the front. Semi-elliptic leaf springs were under the frame at the front but outrigged at the rear, well away from the frame, as close to the rear hubs as possible to give a stable platform and maximum resistance to the axle’s torque reactions. Laterally braced, a torque tube extended forward to its pivot on the back of the fourspeed transmission.
The ADS II-R’S engine had an aluminium cylinder block and iron head. Twin distributors, at the rear, sparked dual ignition, with the front of the right-hand inlet camshaft able to drive a cooling fan if required for the drive to the race. A pump provided forced water flow. A single side-draft Zenith carburettor delivered racing fuel. Tankage was a combination
of one under the floor, a novel technique Porsche had introduced with his smaller racers, and another placed low behind the axle.
To make the most of its engine’s 109bhp at 4500rpm, the ADS II-R’S bodywork was sublimely sleek. On the Neunkirchner Allee, the fast straight road near the factory that he used for aerodynamic tests, Ferdinand Porsche exploited his aerodynamic expertise.
From its characteristic oval radiator opening to its tapered tail the body was completely devoid of louvres and excrescences. Separate strapped-down covers gave access to the engine and the machinery under the cowl. Having exposed the rear springs to the flow of air, Porsche gave their shackles aerodynamic fairings. As in the three-litre car, slots at the sides of the tail allowed a spare wheel to be carried horizontally during drives to and from races.
Driving on the road was the means Austro Daimler employed to get its three team cars to Monza for the Italian Grand Prix on September 3rd, 1922. With jury-rigged front fenders and tails piled high with luggage, parts and tools, the racing cars set out with Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche leading the way. During the wet journey a swig of vermouth revived a freezing 13-year-old Ferry.
Early pleasure over the ADS II-R’S fast pace on the fast Monza track gave way to alarm when piston crowns started failing. Although the team arrived a fortnight early, this was a fundamental flaw that would take some fixing. To Porsche’s rescue came the winner of the Targa Florio earlier in the year, Count Giulio Masetti. The well-connected Italian nobleman found a factory that was able to cast and machine new pistons of an improved alloy to Porsche’s specifications. Problems with the gearbox of one of the cars were solved when Ferry extracted broken pieces with his slender hands.
Drivers for the Grand Prix were Alfred Neubauer, Fritz Kuhn and Lambert Pöcher. The 497-mile race posed a huge challenge to the cars as well as to the Austrians, who had never competed at this level of the sport. With official practice about to begin, they were just getting to grips with the track’s challenges when Fritz Kuhn came to grief on the fast righthand bend approaching the pits, the Curva Grande. The car’s tail swung out, triggering a series of slides – Kuhn fighting for control – that ended with the white car lurching off the track
and crashing to a stop. Thrown out, Kuhn died on the spot.
This was a tragedy beyond Ferdinand Porsche’s imaginings. Of course they knew racing was dangerous. In June’s French Grand Prix, Biagio Nazzaro was killed when his car’s rear axle failed. Closer to home, in May the skilled and respected Otto Hieronimus died in a crash of his Steyr at the Ries hillclimb. As a leading Austrian driver, engineer and innovator, the career of Hieronimus had paralleled Porsche’s. Now, while trying to step its racing up a gear, Austro Daimler suffered a mortal setback. Porsche withdrew his remaining cars and the team drove back to Austria in a state of profound remorse.
Kuhn’s death was the result of a loss of control. Was it the driver’s fault? Or had something in the car caused such a violent swerve? Young Ferry was an eyewitness: ‘It seemed as though the very instant he entered the Curva Grande the rear portion of the car gave a sudden lurch to the left.’ Inspection of the wreckage drew suspicion to the left rear wheel.
For more than a decade Porsche had enjoyed an excellent relationship with England’s Rudge Whitworth, maker of his quick-detachable racing wire wheels. He cabled the firm to ask what their tests had shown on the wheels he’d been sent for his ADS II-RS. Reading their reply, the blood drained from the engineer’s face. Because the workforce had been on strike, said Rudge, the wheels hadn’t been given their usual checks. Fritz Kuhn’s death had been avoidable.
Although Fritz Kuhn would not have wished it so, his mortal crash at Monza foreshadowed the end of Porsche’s racing initiatives at Austro Daimler. Coupled with rampant inflation, Austro Daimler’s troubled finances ruled out further works entries of the promising ADS II-R. Although a sound basis for future development, it would have needed supercharging—a costly further investment—to keep pace with its rivals at a time when this technology was being introduced by Mercedes and Fiat.
Francis Luther of Britain’s Beardmore, which had made Porsche’s airplane engines under licence early in the war,
found a home in Britain for at least one of the 1922 2.0-litre team cars. It first appeared at Brooklands in the spring of 1923, rounding the banked track at a 92.2mph average. The ADS II-R competed successfully through the next several seasons, ultimately lapping at almost 100mph in 1926.
This 1922 Monza Austro Daimler appeared in a new guise in 1928. It was visibly the same car, with its long tail and twin hood panels, but now with a more downsloping nose. Porsche’s engine was gone and in its place was a supercharged 1½-litre engine specially built by Laystall Engineering. This was a sensationally exotic four with positive valve closing, variable valve timing, four oil pumps, roller connecting-rod bearings and a Cozette vane-type supercharger. Developing 120bhp at 6000rpm, it propelled the Laystall Special to Brooklands lap speeds approaching 110mph. Porsche’s chassis was more than able to cope.
Controversy over Fritz Kuhn’s crash contributed to boardroom clashes at Wiener Neustadt that led to Ferdinand Porsche’s departure from Austro Daimler in 1923. At Mercedes, his next employer, he designed successful 2.0litre Grand Prix cars before creating the great Auto Unions of the 1930s as an independent engineer.
The end of the 1930s found him consulting again with Mercedes-benz on the design of its Grand Prix cars, conducting the tests that led to its adoption of two-stage supercharging in 1939. Throughout his long career Porsche was never far from the racing cars that were his great passion.
“PORSCHE’S CHASSIS WAS MORE THAN ABLE TO COPE…”