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Van Gogh

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Beth Behrs

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Anticipating the magic of Bergen, Norway blanketed in snow! ✨❄️🌃 By @kumaran.photography

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Winter nights can be so cold, and dark, and depressing, but also sometimes the light does this and makes you feel like everything is going to be alright

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Scottish Folk Tales and Legends

Artist : Nika Goltz (1925-2012)

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Beef bourguignon

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RWB Porsche

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Bugatti 'Aerolithe'

Only four Type 57 Atlantic Coupes were ever produced by Bugatti. One of them went to Parisian entrepreneur Jacques Holzshuh, before meeting its end on a railway crossing. Another was delivered new to Baron Victor Rothschild and is owned today by American collector Peter Mullin. A third is currently in the hands of Ralph Lauren, while the fourth? Nobody knows. One of the great mysteries of the car world is the whereabouts of ‘La Voiture Noire’: Jean Bugatti’s very own Type 57 Atlantic.

But the car that previewed the lot of them is the one above. Sort of. It’s a rebodied, restored Bugatti ‘Aerolithe’; a prototype first shown off at the 1935 Paris Motor Show.

A man named David Grainger from The Guild of Automotive Restoration was commissioned to recreate the car that paved the way for the most famous pre-war car ever built. He had the original chassis of the Aerolithe – number 57104 – as well as its original 3.3-litre eight-cylinder engine, and rear axle. But no body.

Indeed, David’s team at The Guild had but 11 photos to work from… and had to adhere to coachbuilding standards of the day. Which means they had to fashion the body from magnesium, which is – by all accounts – incredibly difficult to work with. They spent years riveting and shaping the panels into that simply gorgeous Aerolithe form.

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Porsche “Berlin-Rome” Type 64 (1 of 2). 

During 1938, Ferdinand Porsche and Major Adolf Hühnlein met, and the subject of establishing an endurance motor sport event was discussed. Hühnlein was inspired, and he set in motion a plan to organise a race from Berlin to Rome, a 1500km event that would take place in September 1939. No doubt Hühnlein’s motivation to his superiors included promoting Germany’s excellent system of Autobahns which this race would utilise, and the event would also tie in conveniently with the start of production of the KdF-Wagen.

In preparation for the race, it was decided to build three special long-distance race cars, and to Ferdinand Porsche’s delight, these were ordered and paid for by Volkswagen. For political reasons the cars were called KdF-Wagen and so in Volkswagen circles the car was known as the Type 60K10, although the Porsche engineers referred to it as the Type 64.

The 64 was to have an aluminium body, and the wheels were fully covered with removable alloy panels. Due to the event being a long-distance road race, Karl Fröhlich designed the car to carry two spare wheels in its nose, a move which meant the standard fuel tank would have to be relocated further back on the passenger side.

The engine used in the Type 64/60K10 was the standard 985cc unit as used in the KdF-Wagen, by increasing the compression ratio, power output was raised to 32 bhp at 3500 rpm.

With the race date set for September 1939, production of the three cars, Sports Car 1, 2 and 3, commenced in the summer of that year. The three chassis numbers allocated to the race cars, also referred to as the KdF-Rekordwagen, was 38/41, 38/42 and 38/43.

Karosseriewerk Reutter were given the task of making the bodies for the three cars from 0.5mm alloy sheets, but it wasn’t until 19 August 1939 that the first body was completed, a fortnight before the official start date of the Second World War. The second car was only completed on 20 December that year in a dark colour, while the third car, finished in the same silver colour as the first car, was only completed on 15 June 1940.

The plans for Porsche’s own sports car were already on the drawing board in 1947 and the first of the new 356 models was officially registered in June 1948. Just as the Type 64 had looked so ultra-modern when compared to contemporary sports machinery of the day, so too did the Porsche 356 immediately date other sports cars of the period. It was at this time that, with the war now over and plans to develop the 356 into a really competitive sports car in the market, that the old Type 64 became redundant to Porsche. Fortunately, the Swiss racing driver Otto Mathé had shown an interest in acquiring the Type 64, otherwise this crucially important piece of Porsche history may well have gone the way of its two siblings, and been scrapped.

“Otto Mathé, was one of the first, if not the very first driver, to use Porsche products for racing,” said Oliver Schmidt of the Prototyp Museum in Hamburg. Today there are two Type 64s in existence, the first being the 38/41 car Mathé bought from Porsche in 1949. The second car has been built up from the spares that Mathé bought from Porsche. 

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Lorenzo Bandini, Ferrari 158, 1965 Italian Grand Prix, Monza #F1

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Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4

Images by Arnoldas Ivanauskas

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