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Deutsche Welle

It happened in 1938 during an attempt to break the land speed record on the autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt. Three hundred meters short of the finish line, the Auto Union racer with Bernd Rosemeyer behind the wheel rolled. The 28 year old was thrown out of the cab, and was killed instantly. The official version of events is that the car, which was moving at 430 km/h, was struck by a strong gust of wind. Now Martin Schröder, the curator at the new Automotive Museum in Hamburg, says that his research shows that a technical glitch must have caused the accident.