The car manufacturer Edmund Rumpler had every reason to be proud. His car was the sensation at the Berlin Automobile Exhibition of 1921. While competitors like Mercedes were still designing angular motorized coaches, Rumpler presented a streamlined car which was to be very economical in consumption. The name played on the unique shape of the car: It's called the “Rumpler Teardrop”.

“This vehicle had a very dynamically designed body shape, the shape of a raindrop. You can’t find anything on the car which has the shape of a “cigar box”, so everything is bent and you notice everywhere that Rumpler refined the aerodynamics of the car. The teardrops don’t have any fenders, they’re more like airfoils.”

 

Lutz Ulrich Kubisch, collections director of the “Road Traffic”

"Aerodynamic shape" - the teardrop in the wind tunnel
While the trade press took an immediate liking to the car, it was not well received by the wider public: No-one wanted to buy the teardrop. Its aerodynamic shape appeared too futuristic, and even bizarre. In addition, the front wheels vibrated, so that the teardrop was not easy to steer. There was no trunk whatsoever, and on top of everything the car was outrageously expensive. Not even the Berlin taxi companies wanted to purchase the bizarre car at a special price:

“The taxi industry is, of course, the place where a car can show what sort of performance it can offer in permanent operation. The taxi drivers quickly discovered that the teardrop, in spite of its beauty, was a very petulant vehicle, and they quickly turned off it. They tried to revoke further orders, and did everything to get rid of the sedan which was, in their eyes, unfit for use.”

 

Lutz Ulrich Kubisch

In 1925, Edmund Rumpler was forced to give up. The film director Fritz Lang bought the remaining vehicles at a bargain price, and let them go up in flames in his science-fiction film Metropolis – as a criticism of blind technological rapture. Only two teardrops survived. In 1979, Volkswagen retrieved one of these from the Museum of Germany in Munich, and put it in the wind tunnel. The engineers were astounded: The vintage car from 1921 achieved a sensationally low air resistance co-efficient of 0.28. The designers immediately went to the drawing-board. They needed years, however, before they could design their Golf with aerodynamics even approaching those of the Rumpler teardrop.
Images: Berlin Technology Museum