“Tell me its pedigree and I’ll tell you what kind of car it is!” According to legend, this pungent comment was made by the great Tazio Nuvolari when a manufacturer asked him to drive a new car in the German Grand Prix.
West Germany’s Auto Union products—the front-wheel-drive DKW 750 and the larger Auto Union S-1000 series—are direct descendants of the famous Auto Union racing cars that Nuvolari was later to drive to victory in the British and German Grand Prix races, and which literally cleaned up on the racing tracks of Europe before World War II ended peaceful competition be¬tween great automobile marques. These were the cars that would do 205 mph, weighed a mere 2,508 pounds, and were constructed with what one writer describes as an “unearthly kind of superior craftsmanship ...” (1961 - Keith Ayling)