In the last week of August, the 9. Hamburg-Berlin Classic Rally with 182 beautiful oldtimers and youngtimers took place. I was invited by the team of Autostadt to make some pictures of the three days of the rally. During a couple of very beautiful sunny days starting in Hamburg, I was jumping into the eight Volkswagen cars that were part of the Autostadt team. Being inside the cars during the rally was a lot of fun and the sound of the motor roaring conveyed the adrenaline of the race. The first car I went inside was a 1956 Volkswagen 1200, the driver and the co-pilot – Tim and Alexander – were very friendly and worked very focused as a team, which is why we never got lost; I have to say I learnt a lot from them about time, precision and of course the most important of all, fending off any distractions during the rally.
In the other Volkswagens I got in, the crew was really nice as well; the funniest part was when some of them would get lost or distracted and would lose control of the timers. What drew my full attention was one cute couple who owned a very beautiful 1962 Volkswagen 1200 Export; they met each other on the day one of them bought the car in the 60´s; they were telling me a lot of stories about the history of the car, e.g. they had purchased it for only 100 Deutsche marks!
The rally led us through very beautiful towns and cities with very cool sites, like Lärtz, Plau am See, Ulrichshusen, Fleessensee, Moltzow and Potsdam. They stopped to get some food and drinks and this was the perfect moment to capture with my camera all the cars arriving in these places; the most beautiful of the latter were an old train station and the Lärks airport with a yellow airplane moving synchronized with the cars in a spectacular “choreography”. Also in the rally, I took photos of some beautiful oldtimers, like Mercedes Benz 300SL, 280 SL Pagoda, Maserati Indi, Porsche 911, 356, Toyota 2000GT, Bmw 507, 2800 and a very pretty 2002 GT4 designed by Frua. Some of the owners wore really cool outfits matching the cars like the ones in the Ferrari 308 GTSi and the Citroën 11b.
It was very interesting to see the people along the way, waiting in front of their houses looking very excited, waving over to us. Some of them even put their own oldtimers into their front yards; this was so nice and funny.
On the final of those days the Autostadt team, had prepared some activities in the hotels. The most beautiful hotel was in Fleessensee next to a stunning lake and a half part of a Volkswagen 1600. When I arrived at the hotel from the rally, I jumped in the lake; it was very refreshing, relaxing and exactly what I needed after a long sunny day. On the last day of the rally, we finished in Berlin with a dinner party in one of my favorites places called Classic Remise with amazing food, and of course even more amazing cars.
Thanks a lot to all the team of Autostadt.
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