The “Wind Tunnel Car”
It’s not clear whether or not this body that is shown in a
promotional Dauer video is in fact a “real” body or whether it was just made for wind tunnel testing. One can see in the video that the car is not a fully assembled car, and is missing several important items (like an engine). In addition, the rear decklid shown in the video lacks the distinctive “962 Le Mans” script that adorns the rear. This script is molded into the bodywork and can be seen on nearly every other car shown in promotional photos and videos thereafter. This “wind tunnel car” body has not surfaced anywhere else that we know of, and it may have been destroyed, or recycled in the ten years that Dauer was producing these cars. There’s also the theory that the wind tunnel bodywork is manufactured out of fiberglass or may even be a partial clay mockup – in the video it takes four people to lift and position the rear bodywork which hints at a non-production setup (a typical 962 rear tail can be fairly easily lifted by two people).
The Dauer 962 wind tunnel body
When I showed this to Steve Austin of Austech Design he added, “
This might simply be a very heavy clay model, you can see how many people it is taking to lift the front and rear tail sections in the video. I suspect they used this clay model to make the tooling from. This I suspect rendered it useless afterwards and why there isn’t a wind tunnel body anywhere. Also, the rear spoiler support pylons are wire struts on the wind tunnel model. The Prototype at Frankfurt has the correct ‘vented’ pylons fitted. These channel air to the underbody for what I believe to be for gearbox cooling. See here:”
The Dauer 962 Prototype Car with the intake vents incorporated into the rear wing – very cool!
“The Prototype Car”
The first commercial body produced by Dauer was displayed at the IAA Frankfurt auto show in 1993 – there are several promotional videos of this unveiling and presentation
currently uploaded on YouTube. One can see that this car was different from the wind tunnel car because the ‘
962 Le Mans’ script that was incorporated into the rear tail only appeared on the Lola-produced cars. In various promotional videos, photographs, advertisements, and press kits, the car used the German plate number N CM 962 often and consistently.
The Dauer 962 Prototype Car as unveiled in 1993 at the IAA Motor Show in Frankfurt, Germany
We believe that this first prototype car is the one that we just acquired. In the same promotional and press photos, you can see a small script that is located on the lower left corner of the body that says “
hand made”. This script is currently present on the body that we have, and is identical to what was displayed in various photos of the time. In addition, the press photos show a black carbon fiber strip that runs across the taillamps in the rear of the car – this is unpainted carbon on this prototype car, and matches what we currently have. The other cars built by Dauer have a body-color matched stripe that runs across the back of the taillamps (including the Sultan of Brunei's yellow Dauer 962 LM).
Photo that shows the Dauer Prototype with the distinctive sticker “hand made” on the fiberglass. Inset photo shows the Dempsey Motorsports car with the same writing. The black carbon retainer strips are identical as well.
The car body we have currently has Michelin stickers placed on the front and rear corners of the car. Michelin sponsored the test of the car at the Volkswagen test track in Ehra-Lessien where the Dauer 962 Le Mans set the speed record, so it is believed that this prototype car was the one that was used for the speed record. Joachen Dauer himself is quoted in an EVO Magazine article saying, “
The car has been independently measured at 404.6kph. That’s 251.4mph, recorded on the Ehra-Lessien VW test track in Lower Saxony.” This was reported in the
July 2003 issue of “AUTO BILD test & tuning”, but we are still chasing down photos and details of this speed record attempt to confirm these details.
It is important to note that the underlying chassis for these cars was passed around and moved in and out of various bodies – we do not know what the original race car chassis was that was mated to this body, but we believe it may have been 962-169 (which was the homologation car and test car used at the 1994 Le Mans).
Press Photo of the Dauer Prototype, N CM 962
Our Dauer 962 Le Mans as it sits, partially disassembled, today (February 2021)
Photo of our Dempsey Motorsports Dauer 962 LM with the distinctive ‘962 Le Mans’ writing on the back. This indicates the body is most likely not the ‘wind tunnel’ body and is the prototype body.
Press Photo of the Dauer Prototype, N CM 962
More on our prototype project car later on. In the meantime, I’ll talk a bit about the other Dauer 962 Le Mans cars.