WOW, isn't the need for speed great. Thanks for sharing your high speed
experience, good that we are still in good enough health to continue on with
that quest,
Dave Haller #93
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dick J" <lsr_man@yahoo.com>
To: "pork.pie" <pork.pie@t-online.de>; <land-speed@autox.team.net>
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 6:45 AM
Subject: German Autobahn Racing
> I had the extraordinary experience of living in
> West Berlin in the mid sixties. That was when I
> learned that gear heads will do anything to feed
> their need for speed. There was a stretch of
> autobahn that went from the "wall" in the
> northern sector, almost straight as an arrow, for
> 21 miles (might have been 21 Km), to the "wall"
> in the southern sector.
>
> Sunday was race day! I used to take my wife and
> young son out near where the autobahn went past a
> lake (The Wannsea (sp)) and through a park-like
> area. We would set up a picnic blanket with
> hundreds of other "spectators" and watch for
> several hours. All sorts of exotic cars, many
> looking like refugees from a road race course,
> would come screaming by with open pipes, some
> singles, some two by two, and sometimes three or
> four in a cluster. Piloting the cars were
> fanatical Frenchmen, Germans, Brits, and
> Americans. They would race at full speed for the
> entire length of the autobahn, then turn around
> at the last exit before the wall, and race back
> the other way. Talk about "full song". I rember
> hearing four and five cars at a time coming into
> earshot and passing out the other side at wide
> open throttle! This went on all day long. It was
> a great experience. Ferarris, Maseraties,
> Porsches, open wheel racers like Lotus and BRM,
> Iso Rivoltas, Corvettes, Shelby Cobras, a 427
> Ford Fairlane that I still clearly remember, all
> racing back and forth all day long. There were
> motorcycles too. Superchared BMW 500s, Nortons,
> BSA Gold Stars, WR and KR Harleys. It was like a
> major car and bike event. This was not an
> organized event, it was just where the "trapped"
> citizen gearheads of West Berlin would go on
> Sunday to keep from getting cabin fever. It
> inspired me to buy a Porsche Super 90, then to
> buy a Devin "D" and swap the motor from the
> Porsche into the tiny fiberglass wonder. By the
> time I left West Berlin and moved to Munich, I
> was severely infected with Germany's brand of
> speed fever. It was the dead of winter before I
> could get time off to go and retrieve the little
> open car and bring it to my new home in Munich.
> I drove it from Bremerhaven to Munich through a
> terrible blizzard. Outfitted in a leather flying
> cap with goggles, and about five layers of
> clothes with a military fur parka the outermost,
> I'd pull the hood tight over the leather cap, and
> wrap a long scarf around my face to keep from
> getting frost bite. I drove as fast as I could
> the entire trip. I would guess that I averaged
> 120MPH not counting "pit stops". The car had a
> small competition windscreen and open pipes. It
> was painted bright red with an Esso decal
> diagonally positioned across the hood, and it had
> a large Porsche crest painted on each front
> fender. It definitly looked the part of a
> racecar. After the second gas stop, and having
> "chatted" with locals about my destination, it
> got to the point that one would have thought I
> was competing for a world's record. German
> gearheads had apparently called ahead and told
> thier friends along the route that some American
> idiot was racing across Germany and it would be
> worth going out in the storm to watch. As I
> neared towns along the autobahn, small groups of
> Germans gathered along the autobahn to wave flags
> and cheer the crazy American along. At one gas
> stop, there was even a reporter who took my
> picture for a local German paper. Once I got
> home and got thawed out, I campaigned the little
> Devin in organized hill climbs throughout
> sourthern Bavaria for three years. I was a member
> of a local "American Military Sports Car Club"
> and we had a series of events competing against
> the "German Military Sports Car Club from
> Bavaria". We had very simple rules, and a lot of
> fun. Just this last weekend I was going through
> boxes of my mother's things, to help her unpack
> in her new apartment, when I came across several
> pictures of the little car. Wow, did that spark
> memories. Now, reading Pork-Pie's stuff has
> fanned the spark into full flame. Ah, the things
> we did when we were young!
>
> Dick J
>
> ///
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