AutoCult VW VLK Streamline (1947) (Germany)

About the Original

The Volkswagen that wasn’t allowed to be one

After World War II, the racing scene quickly came back to life. The race driver Kurt Kuhnke from Braunschweig dreamed of a racing car.

He found an ally for his plan in the Volkswagen engineer Walter Hampel. The plan was to build a racing car with the technology of the Wolfsburg-based manufacturer and an aerodynamically designed car body. Kuhnke and Hampel presented the idea to Volkswagen design chief Josef Kales in the hope of receiving material and professional help from the plant. Josef Kales also liked the project and pledged support. This took place in the form that Gustav Vogelsang devoted himself intensively to the engine and lured a few additional horsepower out the boxer engine.

In the workshop of coachbuilder ‘Heinrich Schwen & Sohn’, the racing car was set up, with a filigree tubular space frame serving as a base, over which the aluminum body was mounted. The car is said to have achieved a drag coefficient of excellent 0.21 in the wind tunnel. All chassis components came from the Volkswagen Beetle, only the wheelbase was shortened by 20 centimeters. The assembly took only three months until the racing car was ready in February 1947.

For the first time, the car was pushed to the starting line of the race ‘Braunschweiger Autobahnrennen’ (Highway race of Braunschweig) on August 24, in 1947. Kurt Kuhnke sat behind the steering wheel of his racing car which was christened with the abbreviation ‘VLK’. These three letters stood for ‘Vollstrom-Leichtbau-Konstruktion’ (Full-Flow Lightweight Construction).