Rome Berlin Racer Type 64

[sled]

damn, I can only imagine how beautiful one of these cars would be in a deep black lacquer finish

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[tstracy39]

Hadn't seen that pic before. Must be the same car as this one:

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[TangoCharly]

this photo shows the work on the type 60 k 10 <<replica which is now on display at the Porsche museum. It´s a pitty they didnt use original drawings or the Mathe car as a reference. Look at the dashboard. That has nothing to do with the original.

[/img]

[TheBauhaus]

rhart,

I am crazy about this car and wish someone would make/offer a VW based replica. If you do an internet search using the words rekordwagen and flat4, there is a site called flat4.org which has a lot of images of the car including images that could possibly be used to make forms. However, the site is not in English. Perhaps you have already seen this site. I think some of the images posted here are from there. Anyway, if you build a replica please post some photos.

[superleggera]

Any updates on the recreation project?

Has anyone found additional pictures of the (clone/bare metal) or original Berlin-Rome racer versions showing the front underhood or other interior / chassis pictures?

[Thanatos]

[sonicjagstang]

If I am not mistaken the original cars didn't get to participate in much due to the war and I believe one was discovered after the wars end and some G.I.s took it out and thrashed it beyond all recognition.

I recall having read this a long time ago. I'll try and dig up some sources. Very beautiful cars.

[sonicjagstang]

The body design was made by the Porsche Büro after wind tunnel tests for a planned V10 sports car that never came into existence, the Type 114. Dr. Porsche promoted the idea to enter the car into the 1939 Berlin-Rome race as a public relations ploy.

Because of official distress at the production and delivery delays in the KdF-Wagen production, Dr. Porsche was able to sell the authorities on the idea of running KdF-based high-performance cars in the 1939 Berlin-Rome race as a public relations ploy. The first 375 miles of the race were to be run on the new autobahnen.

Three of them were built in hand-hammered aluminum by the custom coachwork firm Reutter. Sporting full wheel skirts front and back, these remarkably slippery little wind-cheaters managed to squeeze 90 mph out of their 985 cc flat-four engines, which had been bumped to 50 hp (from 24) by various means, including the addition of dual carburation and a higher compression ratio.

One of the cars was crashed and destroyed by a Kraft durch Freude bureaucrat in the early years of World War II, but the other two were frequently used by the Porsche family to commute between Stuttgart and the Porsche farm in Zell Am See, Austria. Finally, one of them continued in daily use by the Porsches, while the other was stored at the Zell Am See Flying School. Both remaining Aerocoupes survived the War, but in May, 1945 American troops "liberated" the tiny coupe stored at the Flying School, chopped the top off, and in a few weeks totalled it by joy-riding until the engine seized. The car was scrapped - what a loss!

The last 64K10 remained in the hands of Ferry Porsche, who actually had the car restored by Pinin Farina in 1947. It was sold to Austrian motorcycle racer Otto Matte in 1949 (a year after the first Gmund Porsche 356 was introduced). Matte’s Aerocoupe gave Porsche their first international win in the 1950 Alpine Rally - by this time its Volkswagen origin was forgotten, and it had been fully embraced as a Porsche car. Matte drove the 64K10 in competition for the last time in 1982 at the Monterey Historic Races in Monterey, California, 32 years after its first race.

[slow36hp]

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[sonicjagstang]

[erioco]

Sonicjagstang,
I agree with most of what you say about the Berlin-Rome Racer.

I do question that the VW origin of the car was forgotten.
The VW origin of the 60K10 was known by all those involved with the rehab in 47 at Pinin Farina, as well as those who sold the car to Mathe, that was done by Ferry Porsche, who was heavily involved in the project and one of the three drivers to be for the Berlin-Rome race that never happened in 39.

Mathe was very up to date about what Porsche had done. Ferry had put the Porsche name on the Berlin Rome car prior to selling it to Mathe. Every time Mathe opened the hood to see the motor there was no question of it's VW origin, and the chassis was also a dead givaway.
The office evidently always referred to it internally as the typ 64 because so much of the design work for the sports/record car was used in the racer. The official typ name is the 60K10 ie a typ 60 (KdF car) with the 10th body design (K =Karosserie, body) for the typ 60.

The three racers were built on prewar 38 prototype chassis:
Car 1 with chassis 38/41 and engine 38/41;
car 2 with chassis 38/42, and engine 38/43;
car 3 with chassis 38/43, and engine 38/46.

Where does the name of 'Aerocoup' come from? It seems to be a late commer. I haven't seen that from Porsche sources nor elsewhere until around the date of its sale after Mathe's death.

Eric
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[bruce jones]

Here is a copy of the cover of the Vintage Volkswagen Club of America newsletter from October, 1982. The Mathe car had apparently been raced in Monterey the previous summer.
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[bruce jones]

Here are a few more pictures from the 10/82 VVWCA newsletter. The dash (bottom picture, left) looks a little different compared to some of the earlier photos posted in this thread.
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Driving in the slow lane since 1969.

[bruce jones]

Terry Shuler's brief writeup on the Mathe car (first paragraph). I hope these photos help!
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[overrestored]

I went to that early 80's Monterey Historics event... unfortunately no camera! Porsche was the marque that year... awesome display of cars... There was one of the Auto Union cars too... it was amazingly LOUD! The cars then were not overrestored... that phenomena hadn't really happened yet. They were still machines built for racing... and their bodies were hammered back into shape after various altercations... and they wore these fixes like badges... scars... whatever. This Patina is something to be cherished. It is a "quality without a name" ... but I think that this quality (of showing the passage of time and the history of useage) will be THE most important quality of an antique car in the future.

Porsche number one was there... and this was before the resto... so it looked kinda crappy to me... as it had rolled under body work as I recall... it wasn't the original shape. In this case... I defer to the original shape... rather than the re-worked modified shape.

What I remember most was when my notchback with the big motor... bent a steel pushrod because I revved it too high when it was cold... and we had to straighten it out with a couple of rocks on the side of the road to limp it down to town! Fortunately I found a collapsable push rod tube and some new push rods from a shop there somewhere (on a Saturday!)

[sonicjagstang]

erioco: I apologize for any confusion my post may have caused but it was a direct quote from the website www.topspeed.com and not based on any research or opinion of mine.

I am a fan of automobile history and recalled reading some information on the car years ago but forgot the source. I then decided to search the internet for an article on the car to confirm what I recalled and that article was one of the first I found.

[Jake Martinez]

this would be one cool car to recreate
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[erioco]

Sonic,

didn't mean to bite anyone's head off. There is just so much inaccurate info out there on the 60K10 that I sometimes go overboard to try and correct it. Even then, I can't claim to know all about it either. I keep finding new tidbits here and there. often via photos.

But it is one of my favorite cars and I have been looking for info for years.

Eric
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Radclyffe Roadster Replica proj based on an April 47 chassis

[pbaptist]

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[rhart]

Nice shot pbaptist. Any info on where and when etc?