The Type A grew from the P-Wagen project, a racing car concept developed by Ferdinand Porsche after he founded his own engineering firm in Stuttgart. Porsche had conceived the design in 1932–1933 for the new AIACR formula that restricted car weight to 750 kg without driver, fuel, oil, water, or tyres — a regulation intended to limit engine size but which the German manufacturers turned into an arms race. With no customer for his design, Porsche formed the subsidiary Hochleistungsfahrzeugbau GmbH to develop it.
In early 1933, with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler's backing, both Mercedes-Benz and the newly formed Auto Union consortium received state funding for racing programs. Auto Union purchased Porsche's P-Wagen project for 75,000 Reichsmarks and relocated development to Chemnitz, with production carried out at the Horch works in Zwickau. The Type A was the direct result.
The Type A's layout was unconventional by the standards of the 1930s. From front to rear, the car was arranged as: radiator, driver, fuel tank, engine. The supercharged V16 engine, designed with Josef Kales responsible for its architecture, displaced 4,360 cc and initially produced 295 PS (217 kW). With two cylinder blocks set at a 45-degree angle, a single overhead camshaft per bank, and hemispherical combustion chambers, it generated strong torque across a wide rev range — Bernd Rosemeyer would later demonstrate the engine's flexibility by lapping the Nürburgring in a single gear.
Because the fuel tank sat between driver and engine at the car's center of gravity, the front-rear weight balance remained constant as fuel burned — a principle adopted by modern open-wheel designs for the same reason.
The mid-engine placement, combined with contemporary ladder chassis technology and swing-axle rear suspension, made the Type A extremely challenging to drive. All weight behind the driver induced severe oversteer, and wheelspin could be provoked even at speeds exceeding 100 mph. Body testing was conducted at the German Institute for Aerodynamics, and the chassis tubes were originally used to pipe coolant but this was abandoned due to leaks.
The Type A made its competitive debut in 1934 with Hans Stuck as the team's lead driver. Stuck proved immediately competitive: he won the German Grand Prix, the Swiss Grand Prix, and the Czechoslovakian Grand Prix, along with a series of hillclimb victories that earned him the European Mountain Championship. August Momberger took second at the Swiss Grand Prix.
Against the W25 from Mercedes-Benz, Auto Union claimed three major circuit wins to Mercedes' four in 1934. The German Grand Prix was won by Stuck, confirming the Type A as a genuine threat. Hans Stuck also set a speed record of 199 mph on an Italian autostrada outside Lucca using a streamlined variant with an enclosed cockpit, later known as the Auto Union Lucca.
The car's one acknowledged weak point was its handling at low-speed corners, where the mid-engine oversteer was most pronounced. Engineers introduced a Porsche-developed limited slip differential, manufactured by ZF, to reduce excessive inside rear wheel spin under acceleration — though this arrived at the end of the 1935 season and primarily benefited the later types.
The Type A established the template that Auto Union would follow through the Type B and Type C, all sharing the supercharged V16 architecture and rear-engine layout. No Type A cars are known to survive today — they were consumed in the cycle of racing development, components cannibalized for repairs and later models, with whatever remained ultimately lost during World War II and its aftermath. Their legacy endures through the subsequent types they spawned and the influence their layout would eventually have on Grand Prix car design once Cooper revived the mid-engine concept in the late 1950s.
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