[quote]Originally posted by eukie
After the war the earliest hint at Brudes I could find so far is a short but maybe very interesting notice in "Das Auto" 1947 H. 1/2, p39. According to this German magazine, Adolf Brudes at that time was in Berlin, preparing 3 (!) BMW 328 raceready - ordered by an American! No further details. Any idea regarding the identity of this American? The only one that comes to my mind is "Alexander Orley" - http://forums.atlasf...?threadid=28303 - but did he have any connections to Berlin?
(from this thread: http://forums.atlasf...&threadid=66890)
we began about bringing together facts and indications for the relationship between Brudes and Orley. Both of them have already been already discussed in this forum before (some refers in those here:
http://forums.atlasf...highlight=Orley
http://forums.atlasf...ighlight=Brudes
http://forums.atlasf...ighlight=Brudes
http://forums.atlasf...ighlight=Brudes),
but no mention so far of any possible connections between them.
But now slowly a picture is forming bringing also the two other names from the topic line into the game.
Reif had been running the official BMW representation at Chemnitz, which he continued as a repair shop specialised on BMW cars after the war. Also I have reports, that he made "a number" of BMW 328 completely from some spare parts in the early post war years.
Soon after he built up also an open-wheel competition sports car for a certain Count Karl von Horn, who entered it regularly for Helmut Niedermayr to drive. For better illustration here two pictures of that car.
The first one shows Niedermayr in the car (#115; front right) at the start at Cologne late in 1949,
while the second one is from Halle in 1950, when the car had now become Niedermayr´s personal property and been subject to a minor face-lift.
Now back to Brudes: In the No. 11 issue of "das Auto" in 1950 it is reported, that Brudes had at least a big part in the development of this car. During 1949 he had also had some occasional outings with it, before he appeared in the cockpit of the new "factory" (from the now Soviet-controlled Eisenach plant) BMW S1 at Dessau and the Sachsenring at the end of the season (see here:
again the car on the right)
To me this is further indication, that he was also quite talented on the mechanical side. And shortly afterwards a second car left Reif´s workshop, but it seems, that this was not used in competitions:
So taking into calculation Brudes´ connection to Reif and also the information we have, that both of them created a number of "BMW"s in the late fourties, can lead to the assumption, that this could in fact refer to the same cars and that Brudes and Reif have built them together.
And this is when Orley comes now into that play. From the former thread we know, that he used two different cars.
The first one was a double seater with open wheels, very much like the Reif (but of course also like all other BMW related specials of the same layout), which he used in 1948 before he switched to the Veritas single seater from 1949 onward.
Here a collection of pictures of that car (the "Todd Speciale"), that I received from AdamF and GIGLEUX:
(thank you very much, guys
)The origin of this car is still very much unknown. Alessandro da Silva suggests, that it was built in Germany, but we have not found proof for this theory yet. But if eukie is right in his assumption, that Orley could have been Brudes´ (or Reif´s) "American customer", and taking into account, that he had also a Munich address around 1948, then pieces might perhaps fit together and the "Todd Speciale" could have indeed come from some East German workshop!
So what we need is further information about Orley, his relations in Germany and his connections to Brudes, Reif, Niedermayr and perhaps also to this mysterious Count von Horn.
