Christie’s are going to be auctioning one of the only two 1939 Auto Union D-Types in the world. It is expected to fetch the highest ever price for a car of any sort.

The D-Type was Auto Union’s response to Hitler’s demand that German cars be unbeatable in racing. I’m sure we all have seen photographs of the rear-engined monster, a car so ferociously difficult to drive that only the truly talented (and brave), like Nuvolari and Caracciola, could drive it.

But what a gorgeous monster it is! As I mentioned in a previous post, its looks were to influence the design of the Audi TT Coupe, a distant inheritor of the Auto Union legacy. Like the Mercedes offering of the time, the D-Type met the challenge of racing with oodles of power but at least the Auto Union engineers made the fight against Alfa Romeo a little fairer by choosing a configuration for the time that made the car almost a death trap!

So, if you have a few million to spare, remember to put your bid in early.

But what of now? What is there to dream of today? Well, there are plenty but I quite like the Nissan 350 Z. It took a while to get used to it but it grows on you.

It’s all the fault of the Audi TT Coupé, of course. I think they realized that the old Auto Union rear engined racers from before WWII really had something and decided to re-create the look for today. In doing so, they introduced modern car design to the arc of a circle, something we haven’t seen in cars for more than fifty years. The strangest thing is that it works, once you’re over the initial shock.

And the Nissan 350 Z is a Japanese take on the theme, although they made things difficult for themselves by throwing in the triangle, that nemesis of 21st century design. Triangles are for static things like pyramids and don’t belong anywhere near anything that is intended to move.

But I have to admit that those Nissan designers have come close to making it work. By extending the triangles a long way along the body, they make them less obtrusive, almost mere flashes of color to highlight the rounded shapes of the rest of the car. They have understood, too, that what makes the Audi design successful is the suggestion of power it gives - hence the deliberately rectangular grille on the blunt nose of the Nissan.

Throw in some big wheels and a slight flare to the wheel arches and you have a close-coupled, compact design that looks as if it means business. Which is exactly what the designers wanted, of course. The Audi is prettier but the Nissan looks more powerful. Maybe those triangles have something to say about aggression, after all…