Willi Martini

Willi Martini (born January 6, 1925 in Adenau ; † April 30, 2001 ) was a German motor vehicle master, designer , racing driver and businessman . He was best known as a tuner and through his success with racing cars based on the BMW 700 .

Life

Willi Martini was the first child to the postal worker Michael Martini and his wife Margarete. He was already enthusiastic about aviation during his school days in Adenau, got his glider license at the age of 14 and wanted to become an aircraft manufacturer.

War and Post War

After finishing school, Martini found a training position at the Heinkel aircraft factory in Oranienburg , before he was drafted into the Air Force at the age of 18 and was briefly imprisoned towards the end of the war. He then worked as an installer in Stuttgart. In 1951 Martini returned to Adenau and was hired by Ernst Loof , who built and maintained Veritas sports and racing cars in the former Auto Union workshops at the Nürburgring, directly behind the main grandstand at the time . When Veritas went bankrupt for the second time in 1953, BMW took over the facilities, but continued to employ Loof and the rest of the staff. In 1954, BMW decided to cease operations at the Nürburgring, whereupon Martini moved to the Hoffmann factory in Lintorf in the Bergisches Land and temporarily worked on the development of a motocoupé similar to the BMW Isetta . In the following three years he worked at BMW in Munich and passed the master's examination. After returning to Adenau in 1958, he started his own business as a car dealer with a workshop and towing company in the previous BMW offices at the Nürburgring. In his company, Martini supported the Formula Junior project of racing driver Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips in 1959 , who wanted to make it easier for young people to get into motorsport with an inexpensive car.

The 1960s with BMW

Heinz Schreiber in the Martini-BMW No. 77 makes space for John Surtees, Ferrari, to overtake in the Nürburgring-Südkehre

Martini-BMW in the Aremberg section

Willi Martini was enthusiastic about racing. He saw a worthwhile tuning object in the BMW 700, which was built from 1959 to 1965 . For racing, he increased the engine output from 40 to 52 hp, revised the chassis and replaced the standard windows with Plexiglas to make the small coupé lighter than it was anyway. He used the cars prepared in this way with great success, partly driven by himself, but also with Hubert Hahne and other touring car drivers well-known at the time. Among other things, a BMW 700 S registered by Martini won the touring car class up to 700 cm³ in the 500 km race at the Nürburgring in 1961 and took 16th place overall. 73 vehicles entered the race. Martini offered the race-ready BMW 700 SC for sale for DM 5,850 and found many buyers. Adjusted for inflation, the price would be EUR 13,300 today. Customers included Wolfgang von Trips, who bought six of these cars for Scuderia Colonia , as well as five-time Formula 1 world champion Juan Manuel Fangio , who also bought six of his BMW 700s from Martini for Argentine drivers.

In the 1000 km race in 1963 on the Nürburgring, three Martini BMW prototypes with plastic bodies started, which Willi Martini had developed and built in cooperation with Clemens Ahrend, a specialist in plastic design in Bachem , and Otto Betzner and which are produced in a small series should be. Another prototype with a stylistically revised body was completed at the end of the year and was widely recognized in a test by auto motor und sport magazine . A few copies followed; however, it did not go into series production. Two of the first prototypes were registered for the 1000 km race by the Martini racing community with drivers Heinrich Hülbüsch / Georg Bialas and Heinz Schreiber / Hubert Hahne. Walter Schneider used the third car with Anton Fischhaber on his own notice . This car had a vertical shaft motor with an output of around 80 hp as in the BMW 700 RS, two works cars that Martini bought from BMW in 1964. The Martini-BMW from Hülbüsch / Bialas finished 25th in the race, in which 67 mostly larger-capacity cars started. He drove 36 laps or 821.2 km on the Nordschleife in 7:33 hours, which corresponds to an average speed of 108.8 km / h.

After BMW had stopped production of the 700 series, Martini also turned to other makes, but mainly developed the larger BMW models. In 1967 Willi Martini tried to get into Formula 2 , which was new that year . On a chassis with parts from Brabham , with its own plastic body and revised BMW four-cylinder engine from mass production, a car was created that - driven by Willi Martini himself - was to make its debut at the Eifel race in April 1967 on the Nürburgring south loop . However, the car turned out to be too weak, so the project was discontinued.

The attempt to create a Formula M based on the BMW 700 based on Formula V had failed in 1966, among other things, because Martini, contrary to the rules for brand formulas, installed a rear wheel suspension with triangular wishbones as in the BMW 700 RS. However, the rear axle of the production vehicle was prescribed.

From the Nürburgring to Adenau and Nürburg

When the space at the Nürburgring was no longer sufficient, Martini set up an additional company in Adenau in 1966, now with a sales room in which the new, larger BMW 1500 models  - the "New Class" - were appropriately presented. At the end of 1982 he had to give up the halls at the Nürburgring because a hotel was to be built in its place in connection with the construction of the Grand Prix track . Martini then moved to Nürburg , where he had a new production facility and a showroom built. In 1991 Martini retired, whereupon BMW bought the Nürburg plant; the operation in Adenau was given up.

Private

Willi Martini had been married since 1952. The couple had six children, four sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Michael Martini, was employed in his parents' business and continued to work as a foreman and test driver even after the takeover by BMW. In retirement, Willi Martini devoted himself mainly to his garden. His wife died in the summer of 2000 and a few months later he suffered a stroke, which was followed by a heart attack in April 2001, from which he died.

literature

• Wolfgang Thierack: Racing legend Willi Martini . Schneider Text Editions Ltd., 2004, ISBN 0-9541746-5-8 .

Web links

• Website with pictures and description of the 700 RS accessed on December 3, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Wolfgang Thierack: Racing legend Willi Martini . Schneider Text Editions Ltd., 2004, ISBN 0-9541746-5-8 .
2. ↑ Wolfgang Thierack in declutching . Retrieved November 25, 2015.
3. ^ Matthias Röcke: Veritas and Martini BMW . Retrieved November 26, 2015.
4. ↑ Willi K. Michels, Luki Scheuer: Nürburgring - hunting ground for fast men . Mittelrhein-Verlag, Koblenz.
5. ^ Manfred Jantke: Martini-BMW . In: auto motor und sport , issue 3/1964, pp. 28–31.
6. ↑ Octane Magazine: Boxer with Two Pots.Retrieved December 3, 2015.
7. ↑ Michael Behrndt / Jörg-Thomas Födisch, Matthias Behrndt: ADAC 1000 km race . Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2008, ISBN 978-3-89880-903-0 .