PastImperfect/Rudi Uhlenhaut: The great car engineers? Porsche, Lanchester, Issigonis, Chapman, Lancia - all names you've heard before, but there is one more that should be added to the pantheon of greats. Rudi Uhlenhaut.
With the possible exception of Vincenzo Lancia and Colin Chapman, there have been very few engineers who could not only design a car but could also drive it to its limits on the road or on the racetrack. Amongst this handful of men, Rudi Uhlenhaut was supreme.
In August 1936, Rudi joined Mercedes-Benz to head a new technical unit formed to be the link between the engineers and designers and the racing drivers who drove their creations on the track. Mercedes new racing car for the 1936 season had been a disaster and Uhlenhaut steeped into the hottest of seats in motor racing. To solve the problems of the car, Rudi first organised a test session at the formidable Nurburgring with his two top drivers. With their departure after the test he was left with few answers so he did the only thing he could. He drove the car himself around the Nurburgring at racing speeds, pounding round and round for endless laps throughout the month of August 1936. At first the mechanics expected disaster.
But after a few cautious laps, Rudi began to circulate at speeds very close to the best lap times of the team's "official" drivers. Years later, he was to comment "After I'd driven for a few miles, I realised that a racing car was much the same as a passenger car. There's not very much difference, nothing sensational."
For the next 20 years Uhlenhaut tested every Mercedes car and was even entered as a reserve driver for the Grand Prix team so that he could test the racing cars on the circuits on which they would have to perform. Quite often, in private testing, Uhlenhaut would don a pair of goggles and climb bare-headed aboard a car to check out a problem that was being experienced at racing speed. An indication of his ability behind the wheel came in 1955, when 23 years older than Stirling Moss, he lapped the Nurburgring in a Mercedes W196 within 10 seconds of the best time achieved by Moss.
Responsible for both road and racing cars, within Mercedes Uhlenhaut was legendary and it is no exaggeration to say that his character and personality were key to establishing the post-war tradition of product excellence on which the company's reputation today rests.
His last project for the company before retirement was the Wankel-engined C111 sports car. Uhlenhaut was lukewarm about the Wankel engine but persuaded the Mercedes board that it needed more power. The result was the development of a four-rotor Wankel engine producing over 400 bhp. Sadly, although 13 C111s were built before Uhlenhaut's retirement, the C111 never found its way into production.
In May 1989 this unique engineer died peacefully in his sleep.