The Mercedes-Benz T80 - A record car stopped by WW2 #Blogpost

How it all started in 1936

The man behind this idea was Hans Stuck, a famous german racedriver in the 1930’s who was known as the “King of the Mountains”, he is also the father of racing legend Hans-Joachim Stuck!
As he turned older he had more and more young competitors against him, even inside his own team - Auto-Union.
So he needed to do something that would set him above all other drivers:

The land speed record

My desire of life is to be the fastest man on earth. I will also summon up every sacrifice and performance for it...

… with this words he went public and contacted the Daimler-Benz AG.
After long consideration they accepted his idea and sent it to the engineering firm of Ferdinand Porsche, the former chief engineer of Daimer and later creator of the most succesful sportscar producer in the world - Porsche AG. The work started in 1938. With the help of Ernst Heinkel, Reinhard von Koenig-Fachsenfeld and Josef Mickl he developed and designed the record car.

On the first photo is Ferdinand Porsche , on the second Ernst Heinkel, on the third Reinhard von Koenig-Fachsenfeld and on the last one Josef Mickl

The project’s got officially sanctioned by Adolf Hitler, who was a fan of race cars. It was also a great occasion for the Third Reich to use the planned record of the T80 for propaganda to show the world how superior German engineering was.

The date of the record run was set to be January 1940, but this didn’t happen due to the beginning of World War 2 on September 1 in 1939.
Hitler called the car “Black Bird” and wanted to have it in the german nationalistic colours, the german eagle and the swastika, but this also didn’t happen and the car’s got garaged for the rest of it’s life until today.

The Beast itself

Body and Construction
The Mercedes-Benz T80 is a massive vehicle with over 8.2 meters (26 feet) and almost 2.9 tons (6385 lb).
It’s frame is made out of tubes and the streamlinebody from aluminium, which is extremly aerodynamic designed with additional wings for downforce and stability at higher speeds.
The T80 had a astonishing a drag coefficient of only 0.18.
It is a 6 wheeler (2 rear ones are driven) with some really thin Continental tires and 500mm (diameter) drum brakes.

Engine and Topspeed
At the beggining it was planned to use the DB-601 from the legendary Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter, but later the bigger and stronger DB-603 engine (which was a prototype at the time) (44.5 liters compared to the DB-601’s 33.9 liters) seemed to be way better.
The power was about 3000hp, but it could get increased up to 3500hp.
The first topspeed target was about 550kp/h, at end of the development it was set to about 750kp/h!

The whole construction without bodyframe

Here with bodyframe

Today it sits in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.
Let’s hope it will get tested sometime in the future!

The end

What do you think about the Mercedes-Benz T80?
I hope you liked my first ever blogpost!
Sorry if I made some grammar mistakes, I’m not a native english speaker.