SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – (April 21, 2009) – A historic Horch, part of the Peter Briggs Collector’s Car Collection, will be sold by Bonhams & Goodman in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, May 3.
This fascinating car was presented to Robert Gove of Victoria from the Maharajah of Bharatpur in the 1930s in exchange for horses. The Gove family had supplied the Maharajahs with fine horses of all kinds – polo mounts, racehorses and many thousands of horses for the Indian Army. The Australian horses, known as walers, were renowned in India and Gove’s father, Julius Gove, had been supplying them to the Indian government and it’s aristocracy for two decades before he passed away in 1922.
In late 1933 or early 1934 Robert Gove and the then 17 year old Maharajah made an unusual deal in which Gove took possession of a 1931 Horch 480 from the Maharajah’s garage as a gift or in part payment for a prize horse.
The extremely rare and valuable automobile created a sensation upon its return to Melbourne. Following the depression years, luxury cars were few and far between and rarely seen in public. The Horch was the 25th car built out of a total production of a few more than 50 cars in its two-year production life, so even in the 1930s these were rare cars indeed.
The Horch is being sold as a part of the Peter Briggs collection which also includes a 1926 AC Royal Roadster, a 1933 Aston Martin Le Mans 1 1/2 litre ‘Long Chassis’ Sports Tourer, a Jaguar SS two and half litre Sports saloon, and a 1910 Napier 15hp Colonial Model Roi de Belges Tourer amongst others.
CAR RECALLS START OF AUDI WHICH TURNS 100 THIS YEAR
Horch means to `listen or hear’ in German and Audi means to listen or hear in Latin. The link between the two marques is explained by the history of the distinguished designer August Horch (12 October 1868 – 3 February 1951), a German engineer and automobile pioneer, the founder of the manufacturing giant which would eventually become Audi. August Horch worked for Karl Benz from 1896, before founding A. Horch & Cie in November 1899, in Ehrenfeld, Cologne, Germany.
The first Horch automobile was built in 1901. The company moved to Reichenbach in 1902 and Zwickau in 1904. Horch left the company in 1909 after a dispute, and set up in competition in Zwickau. His new firm was initially called Horch Automobil-Werke GmbH, but following a legal dispute over the Horch name, he was obliged to change the company name. (The court decided that Horch was a registered trademark on behalf of August Horch’s former partners and August Horch was not entitled to use it any more). Consequently, Horch renamed his company to Audi Automobilwerke GmbH in 1910, Audi being the Latinization of Horch.