The Bremen Classic Motorshow once again kicked off the classic car season in German-speaking countries on the first weekend of February. And as every year, the show had a special motto: "The 70s: simply Keil!"
Colorful wedge shapes
Around 600 exhibitors presented around 45,000 spectators with everything to do with the wedge shape theme, as well as lots of other things about old two, three and four-wheelers.
There were a number of dream cars on display in the special show. Concept studies such as the Mercedes C111 and the BMW Turbo alongside real production cars, the fastest road-legal sports car at the time, the Lamborghini Countach, for example, or a Lotus Esprit with a plastic body and what was once the fastest production saloon in the world: the 1979 Aston Martin Lagonda cost as much as three and a half Ferraris or seven Mercedes-Benz S-Classes. The model on display was the only four-door car in the special show.
At the other end of the wedge-shaped car price scale, Volkswagen-Autostadt displayed five different Scirocco specimens in typical 70s colors at its stand.
The Wolfsburg-based company presented the only surviving Group 2 Scirocco from Oettinger with 170 hp as an exotic model.
Celebrities on board
Among the celebrities available to the public for autographs and petrol talks were the rally world champion duo of 1980 and 1982, Walter Röhrl and Christian Geistdörfer. The now almost fully restored Ford Capri 2600 Kleint RS, with which Röhrl established his fame, was on display again.
The 1979 European Rally Champions, Jochi Kleint and Gunter Wanger, who know the car very well, were also at the stand. Geistdörfer very generously supports the restoration project of the Hamburg Autonomous Youth Workshops. "The car will be back on the track by the Hamburg City Park Race this summer at the latest," promises Geistdörfer. The pilot will be Walter Röhrl or Jochi Kleint.
With Kleint's support, Gustav Hausmann is rebuilding a Ford Escort 1300 GT as another rebirth of a rally legend.
Alexander Gawronski presented another project of his youth workshops at another stand: The smallest car manufacturer in the world, Cuno Bistram, built five small racing cars with Ilo engines for Hagenbeck's zoo in Hamburg shortly after the Second World War, one of which is road-legal. The "children's racing cars", modeled on the Silver Arrows, had been considered lost since the 1960s, and four of them have been in storage at the Hamburg Museum of Labor since 2012. From this spring, the youth workshops want to start refurbishing them with the support of restorer Nikolas Aichele.
The duck of the traveling dentist
The exhibition stands of the brand clubs were once again lovingly designed. In keeping with this year's motto, the Citroën 2CV enthusiast with his white duck is Klaus Peter Keil. He was a dentist in the 1980s with an identical duck as a mobile dentist in Bremen. Then he had to sell the car. But when he retired in 2011, his old love was rekindled. His old original could no longer be found, but he got himself an identical 1987 model full of rust and dents.
He completely restored the duck with a new frame, galvanized sheet metal, fresh pistons and cylinders. Today, the beloved car looks just like the old company car did in its heyday.
Honored with a piston
The F-kubik group awarded its annual "Golden Piston" prize to the internationally renowned author Karl Eric Ludvigsen for his special services to motor-historical public relations work. Born in 1934, Ludvigsen's journalistic work has been recognized in the automotive industry since the 1950s.
He wrote for Motor Trend, Auto Age, Sports Car Illustrated, Automobile Quarterly and other American magazines. His more than 50 books, 35 of which have also been published in German, deal with topics such as Porsche Mercedes Benz, Ferrari and Volkswagen. He has also published biographies of Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart, Juan Miguel Fangio and other famous racing drivers. He has already received numerous awards, his first being the "Golden Piston" in Germany.
