Cocles wrote:gilgen wrote:Isn't it a shame, how Merc have tried to claim the term "Silver Arrows" as their own? The original term was more generic and applied equally to Auto Union.
The original racing color for Germany was white. The first time silver was used was when Mercedes didn't paint their car in order to save some weight. Auto Union then copied them. But hey, no one said there was anything wrong with Auto Union showing up and painting their cars silver too.
Not sure if the winky smiley means you are being ironic ... If you are, sorry for telling you something you already know: I thought this whole scrape the paint off thing had been entirely discredited. The new Auto Unions ran silver first in '32 ... whether this was meant to be symbolic of the new union of manufacturers, or whether this was instead more political, casting aside the historical Weimar white for a modern, new, technological Reich is not clearly established, the timing is close, but who knows.
Mercedes joined AU and changed from white to silver. A Manfred von Brauchitsch driven Merc was called a Silver Arrow in '32. The race that everyone insists this was done for, the 1934 Eifelrennen, was a formula libre event, which therefore had no weight limit.
So maybe Alfred Neubauer was just an old man spinning a tale for a keen biography writer, a folksy scrape the paint-off fable like the story of the kid suggesting letting the air out truck tyres to get it under a bridge. Or maybe in the 50s Mercedes were a little uncomfortable about any previous association with a regime now much less in fashion that it once was. Despite things like dates and facts, the weight-saving Silver Arrows story refuses to die, never underestimate the power of a good creation myth to keep going.
