First victory
August Horch understood early on how important sporting competition was for improving his products. In 1901, he was spontaneously challenged to a race in Cologne with his first Horch car by his bodywork supplier in a Falke car. After a series of defects, he lost by a considerable margin. However, numerous improvements helped him to a clear victory in the rematch.
“And from then on, I knew exactly and have emphasized, stressed and championed this throughout my life:
how infinitely important races are.”
August Horch after his first race in 1901
After further, more or less successful races, the Horch brand achieved its first official victory in the Berlin-Leipzig-Berlin
reliability race on May 8, 1904. The race was organized by the Leipzig Automobile Club in four competitions, two of which were motorcycle competitions. The two automobile competitions, staggered into a maximum time of 11.5 hours for the Berlin-Leipzig route, were designed to be completed quickly without stopping. Only at the Eutritsch turning point were 30 minutes available for refilling water and fuel. In each vehicle, an impartial inspector monitored all infringements of the rules and recorded them on the inspection card.
August Horch registered three vehicles with 16 – 20 hp, 14 – 17 hp and 10 – 12 hp. He himself exceeded the time limit on the short distance by 1 hour and 24 minutes. The two other Horch drivers, Burkhardt and Reißig, remained 1 hour under the time limit and in the end received 2 of the 4 gold medals on offer. A remarkable achievement with 40 participants. This is especially true because the winning cars had already covered the
Reichenbach-Berlin route the day before and then went straight into the race. The press celebrated the victory: “With this favorable result, the company has proven that Horch cars are indeed the most perfect and reliable model of the present day.”
Horch on the Herkomer ride.
The Herkomer competition, in which only normal touring cars were permitted, was held for the first time in 1905 by the Bavarian Automobile Club. Named after the painter Hubert von Herkomer, who came from Landsberg/Lech and achieved great fame in England, the event included a beauty contest, a speed test, a hill climb and a reliability race. Two Horch automobiles were already entered for this first race: The private driver Oskar Graf Bopp von Oberstadt drove the new, large Horch 35/40 hp Phaeton and August Horch himself took part with a small Horch 18/20 hp. Horch was awarded a silver shield of honor.
Things were to go better the following year. The second Herkomerfahrt, which was held from June 5 – 13, 1906, covered a total distance of 1647.7 km from Frankfurt via Munich, Linz, Vienna, Klagenfurt and Innsbruck back to Munich. Among the 155 participants, the following drove for Horch: Dr. Rudolf Stöß in an 18/20 hp car and Georg Betzin, also in an 18/20 hp car. August Horch himself took part in a 35/40 hp model.
The end of the race on 12 June brought a small sensation to all participants and organizers after the race in Munich’s Forstenrieder Park: the Zwickau lawyer Dr. Stöss, in the smallest of all the cars that had started, won hands down ahead of the more powerful competition. Horch came 10th and Georg Betzin still managed third place. This magnificent victory in an international sporting event made the Horch company famous throughout Europe in one fell swoop.
In 1907, the Horchwerke once again entered the Herkomerfahrt. A total of 5 cars – August Horch in a large 23/40 hp model, Paul Kiele, Alfred Kathe, Rudolf Stöss and Ferdinand Schrodt each in a small 11/22 hp model – started in Dresden on June 4. However, Horch was no longer granted the success of 1906. As a result of several accidents and technical defects, Horch finished in 10th place, Kathe was 11th and the previous year’s winner Stöss had to settle for 18th place.
Kaiserpreis race 1907
On June 13, the last day of the Herkomerfahrt, the Kaiserpreisrennen, sponsored by the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, began in the Taunus. The top finishers in both races were to compete for the Emperor’s Prize the next day. Horch entered three of the new six-cylinder cars with Otto Büchner, Hans Hofmann and Ludwig Krapff at the wheel. Büchner retired in the
first race. Krapff and Hofman in the second race. The new large six-cylinder cars were not yet stable enough.
The supervisory board at Horch was less relaxed about this failure than August Horch himself as a technician. They accused Horch of design errors and complained to the Board of Management about August Horch’s allegedly wrong type policy.
Prince Heinrich Ride 1908
The Prinz-Heinrich-Fahrt succeeded the Herkomerfahrt in 1908. It was also not a race, but was advertised as a reliability drive for four- and six-cylinder touring cars with four seats. The minimum weight of the cars was not allowed to be less than 800 kg. The trophy was advertised as a traveling prize for three years. The two-time winner was allowed to keep it.
Horch’s factory team, all driving the small 11/12 hp car, consisted of August Horch, Alfred Kathe, Freiherr von Löw and Dr. Rudolf Stöß.
August Horch had a streamlined “racing cigar” specially made for his car at the Kathe & Söhne coachwork factory in Halle.
In addition to the works team, the Leipzig car dealer Paul Arthur Rowald, the chairman of the Leipzig Automobile Club Axel Carlson, the successful Hamburg racing driver Gertrude Eisemann and Hans Hofmann, representing the Horch garage Robert Magerle in Munich, also took part as private drivers, all in a Horch 23/40 PS. The route was planned to cover 2,200 km in 7 days, starting in Berlin. The journey led via Szczecin, Kiel, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne and Trier to the finish in Frankfurt. In between, speed tests had to be completed on hills and flat terrain. Of the 144 participants who started, 114 cars reached
the finish line on June 17. At the prize-giving ceremony at the Frankfurter Hof, August Horch was awarded 7th prize and Rudolf Stöß 8th.
In the Eisenach hill climb on September 6, 1908 and the Semmeringrennen, the Horch drivers also failed to finish higher than 3rd and 4th respectively.
The Horch brand’s only victory in 1908 came in the 1,000 km reliability race for the “Summer Cup of Sweden”. Achieved by August Horch himself. The motorsport successes of 1908 gave no cause for celebration. Just as little as the hoped-for increase in sales figures.
Reason enough for August Horch’s rival, director Jakob Holler, to blame the company founder. He came under enormous criticism from the Management Board and Supervisory Board and was
finally forced to leave the company on June 21, 1909.
Horch without Horch
In an effort to further establish the brand’s international reputation, the Horchwerke also reappeared in motorsport from 1911.
The Swedish ice race and the Stern- und Tourenfahrt Naumburg saw Horchwerke drivers on the winners’ podium, and a gold medal and a golden cup of honor also beckoned at the Russian Kaiserfahrt and the Caucasusfahrt.
In 1912, the Dresden and Munich rallies, the Swedish ice race and the Swedish summer reliability tour were similarly successful.
In 1913, the now victorious brand was again successful in three races in Sweden and in the Austrian Alpine Rally, winning first prize, two honorary prizes and two silver plaques. In 1914, Horch’s sporting commitment ended once again with a victory in the Swedish Winter Reliability Drive.
After the First World War
Horch had achieved its greatest sporting successes before the First World War. After the war, Horch concentrated on large cars, from 1926 onwards on 8-cylinder and later even 12-cylinder cars, which were extremely unsuitable for use in motorsport. Nevertheless, Horch automobiles were occasionally used in motorsport. The Horch 10/35 PS in particular, with its side-valve 2,630 cc 4-cylinder engine retrofitted with an overhead camshaft, became a spirited racing car. After moderate successes on the Avus in 1922 and 1923, it was raced several
times in 1924 and 1925 by private drivers such as Enders, Baier, Seidel and Hirrlinger.
After that, the Zwickau automobiles went quiet in terms of sport. In 1929, however, the Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe caused a sensation when he took part in the Monte Carlo Rally with his almost standard 350 Pullman saloon and was the only German participant to finish within the time limit. In the overall classification, he finished in 19th place!
Baroness Van Lawick drove the second Horch with starting number 14 in the 1929 Monte Carlo Rally. She achieved 14th place overall and came 2nd in the women’s classification.
Soon afterwards, Horch cars were once again making a name for themselves with series victories – but these were now the fashionable tournaments and beauty contests in which Horch
cars appeared and won in droves. In the period after the merger, which was primarily determined by Auto Union’s involvement in European Grand Prix racing, Auto Union resumed the tradition of long-distance and off-road car racing in 1933, in which the four individual brands had already been involved.
These reliability and long-distance drives without stopping were still seen by the manufacturers as an effective advertising tool.
The long-distance competitions were driven on public roads throughout Europe. This resulted in well-known classics such as the Italian Mille Miglia or the 2000 km Deutschlandfahrt.
The 1933 Audi, Horch and Wanderer cars all had a uniform streamlined body. For weight reasons, this body was made of wood covered with artificial leather, similar to the DKW automobiles. While the Audi and Wanderer cars were equipped
with a six-cylinder engine, the Horch coupés had the new 3-liter V8 engine of the Horch 830.
The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 ultimately prevented further races or other motorsport events from being held.