The Highway Kind(43)

“Turbulence?” she said at one point, lifting the edge of the side panel. “I read one account that speculated that it was turbulence caused by the forest. ‘Turbulence is unpredictable in a forest,’” she quoted. “‘The racecourse ran through dense forest on either side.’ A Venturi effect?”

I creased my brow at that and looked at the wreckage, but reluctantly shook my head.

“I can’t see how that could be. I haven’t seen the course, but I’ve seen woodland. Too much irregularity—and to develop such an effect in a run of less than ten seconds?”

“Ridiculous,” she agreed. “But speaking of airflow—it has to have been that, don’t you think?” She spoke with complete confidence, not admitting any possibility that Bernie could have failed in any way.

If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here, I thought, but I obligingly got up and came to kneel beside her over a round steel plate—the air-intake regulator. It was battered, a little bent. There were seven air-intake ports, as I’d specified in my design notes—but all of them had been welded shut.

“That would be a lot of help,” I muttered. “Do you see the foot pedal?”

“Over there, I think. Is this it?” She reached and handed it to me. They hadn’t shortened it, but that didn’t matter, as with the intake ports all permanently closed, the driver couldn’t regulate the airflow with the pedal anyway. Was this evidence of some tampering, though? I didn’t see how it could be—the ports had been sealed with a welding torch; a solid, professional job. No one could have abstracted the plate, made that alteration, and put it back without someone on the crew—probably everyone—noticing. And there were plausible reasons why Auto Union might have done that, depending on the results of their own wind-tunnel tests.

It was getting dark outside, and the sighs of the two men near the door were becoming louder. At last we got to our feet and stood, not wanting simply to walk away.

“I’ll speak to some people,” I said. “At Auto Union.”

She nodded. “So will I. I know the crew; they’ll talk to me.”

We shook hands, very formally, and I walked behind her, away from the wreckage.

Design Note 43.21: Heat Shield

The heat shield is to be placed behind the cockpit, between the driver and the rear axles, which support the ice tank and the fuel tank. Height, 1.1 m, width .87 m. Insulated construction, multiple layers of wood and felt.

Workshop ref. 209/13.


Bernd grew up on a motorcycle. I always thought that’s what made him such a good race driver: he didn’t have any sort of preconception as to what a car could do or what the limits might be.

The limits...those were my province. The province of the designer, and the engineer, and finally of the workmen who built the car to our specifications. If Bernie hadn’t made a mistake, then someone else had.

I took the train to Zwickau. It was a journey I’d made many times, but there was no sense of déjà vu about it. The train carriage was unheated but crowded, and the condensed breath of the passengers ran in trickles down the windows, smearing the landscape of Saxony. And I carried a weight of anxiety that I’d never had previously, not even before the trials of a new design.

A long journey, but I’d started early, and it was just past two o’clock when the taxi delivered me to the Auto Union premises. These were in the old Horch works, a sprawling brickyard ringed with buildings. It was a weekday and the place was bustling with workers, messengers, trucks bringing in piles of rubber tires and sheet steel, the big trailers for shipping cars clustered outside the plant like a herd of skeletal cows.

I felt the strong pull of the workshops, wanted to wander in and see what was happening, smell the hot solder and the rubber and the metal that was my favorite perfume. Maybe later, I told myself, and instead headed for the white-brick building that housed the main offices.

It was only a couple of months since I had worked here regularly, and the receptionist’s face lit up with pleasure at seeing me.

“Herr Doktor Porsche!” he said. “How nice it is to see you again! I didn’t know there was a meeting today—shall I bring you a coffee?”

I would at that point have sold at least a small part of my soul for hot coffee, but reluctantly, I shook my head.

“Danke, Reinhart. It’s not a meeting. I only wanted to see Dr. Eberan for half an hour. Just to go over some technical things about the Stromlinienwagen.”

His face sobered at that.

“Such a terrible thing,” he said, and shook his head. “Poor Rosemeyer. We couldn’t believe it—but we never believe it, do we, and yet we know it happens, it must happen in this business, nein?”

“It does, alas,” I said. “Can you see if Herr Doktor Eberan is available?” I had thought about sending a telegram to make an appointment but decided against it. I didn’t want Eberan to think about it ahead of time and told myself that if he wasn’t in, I would just poke around, maybe ask some questions of the other Auto Union officials—and the engineers. Eberan’s own car was in the yard, though—a big twelve-cylinder Daimler, dove gray and glossy, with a grille that looked like it was about to eat you alive.

Reinhart gestured me to a chair and disappeared. I didn’t sit, though; I hovered in the doorway, looking down the long, dim corridor. The day outside was rainy, and the patches of light that fell into the corridor from the open doors were pale and insubstantial. It seemed I was a ghost myself, recognizing all the things I saw, knowing them intimately, and yet feeling detached.