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NEW YORK - A rare German racing car developed in a programme created by Hitler's regime was displayed for the first time on Thursday as auctioneers predicted it would become the world's most expensive car to be sold at auction.
The grand prix car, a 1939 Auto Union D-Type race car and one of only five originals left from the Auto Union series built in Germany between 1933 and 1939, is expected to fetch between US$12 ($17.43) million and US$15 million at an auction on February 17 in Paris, auctioneers Christie's said.
Christie's said the car, the only one in the series held by a private owner, won the 1939 French Grand Prix. The car was displayed in New York as part of pre-auction publicity. The other surviving cars in the series are held in corporate collections.
"The car represents a leap forward in technology and engineering excellence," said Christie's spokesman Rupert Banner, adding it can run a top speed of 313km/h.
It is one of the prestigious German "Silver Arrows" that were the pinnacle of Mercedes-Benz's and Auto Union's dominant grand prix racing cars in the late 1930s.
In 1933 the German government under Adolf Hitler paid 500,000 Reichmarks to Mercedes and Auto Union, now known as Audi, to develop revolutionary racing cars.
Audi's German historian Thomas Erdmann said the car was the last of its type in the series and there were only two original C-Types and three original D-Types left in the world.
Erdmann said while the German government started the racing car programme, in six years Auto Union poured 20 million Reichmarks into development.
"You would never have been able to make a car like this from that initial sum of money," he said, downplaying Hitler's direct involvement.
After World War 2, the car "vanished under the Iron Curtain," Erdmann said and was discovered again in the mid-1980s in pieces in Ukraine by an American car collector and restored in England.
The car's design places the driver in front of the engine and fuel tanks.
The previous record for a car sold at auction was set in 1987 for a 1931 Bugatti Type 41 Royale Sports Coupe which was sold for US$9.8 million at Christie's in London.
- REUTERS
