Further to my previous post on the Auto Union D-Type, I see that Christie’s are now saying that they expect the D-Type to fetch in the region of $12,000,000. There is an inaccuracy in CNNMoney’s article on the car that I ought to correct, however.

It is not quite true to say that Auto Union are now known as Audi. Auto Union were exactly what their name states, an amalgamation of several German manufacturers, one of which was known as Audi. In the sixties, Auto Union was absorbed into Volkswagen but was allowed to disappear, apparently forever.

In the seventies, when VW decided that they needed a new marque to make luxury cars and to dissociate it from the company’s “beetle” image, someone obviously remembered that they held the rights to the Audi name and it was duly resurrected. It can hardly be said that Audis are the descendant of the D-Type, therefore - only the Audi name survived.

But I don’t suppose VAG will mind at all if their cars are associated in some way with the D-Type - it was a glorious beast, after all. Just take a look at this…

CNN Money has an article entitled What is an American Car, Anyway?. It makes interesting reading, raising such points as the use of chrome that I would not have thought still applied.

But the central theme is correct - there is something about American cars that make them immediately recognizable, especially to the foreign eye. I have often pondered upon this as I watch the streams of cars on the streets and freeways of America. Even the European and Japanese cars are given tweaks that help them to fit into the American look.

In the end, I have to say that it’s the hood (or bonnet, as the Brits call it) more than anything else. Americans have been used to big engines for so long that any car without acres of hood just doesn’t look right. They may turn the engine sideways these days, just as the foreigners do, but the hood must still hint at power beneath.

And that has implications for the overall shape of the car, of course. While European cars especially have become stubby little things with the passenger section the dominant feature of the car, absorbing the hood and trunk, Americans have retained the traditional three-box format and their beloved hoods.

Obviously, this is a generalization and there are exceptions on both sides of the Atlantic. But it’s as true as the point about chrome mentioned by CNN.

Fox News has a story about a Shelby Cobra 427 Super Snake being sold at auction for $5.5 million. Although not a world record, this is the highest ever paid for an American car.

And when you see the spec for this car, it becomes clear why it sold for so much. Made in 1966, the Super Snake added twin superchargers to the 427 Ford V8 - that gave it a 0-60mph time of around 3 seconds, unimagineable acceleration at the time.

Now that’s what I call hairy…

Citroens are an acquired taste. For over fifty years their quirkiness and idiosyncracies have meant that only the adventurous find out how good they are. I became a Citroen man immediately upon buying my first ever Citroen, an AX 14TZS (I really wanted a GT but only two-door versions were available at the time and the family insisted).

It was the best car I ever owned. Suddenly all those Citroen oddities made sense; the single-spoke steering wheel, for instance. I had always thought of it as a gimmick but use one and you realise that now your thumbs can roam unrestricted around the wheel.

The AX turned out to be the perfect Q-car - named after the Q-ships of the First World War, merchant ships fitted with hidden guns that could blast a submarine out of the water. In the same way, the TZS looked so ordinary, without the give-away spoilers and deep splitter of the GT, but it was nearly as quick and handled just as well. Many are the boy racers who were left gasping at the lights as my little red bomb disappeared into the distance.

It weighed almost nothing, you see. The bonnet was so thin that you had to guard it to prevent it being dented by some idiot sitting on it. The rear door was hung on the rear glass, without supports and, as a result, too enthusiastic a slamming of the tailgate would result in the window smashing and the door hanging forlornly from it’s lock. All was forgiven because it was so good to drive.

They raced AXs in France and it was like a renaissance of the mini days of the sixties - hordes of little screamers fighting to be into the corner first. That surely must have been so much fun as to be worth making illegal. The end came far too soon for me.

Citroen replaced the AX with the Saxo, much closer to the Peugeot vision of normality and so much more boring too. In England, some fool drove his Jaguar out of a side street and mangled my TZS beyond repair. All good things come to an end sooner or later, I suppose.

But that little car made a Citroen man of me. I’d never have believed it thirty years ago but now, given the choice, I’d buy Citroen every time. How the mighty are fallen…