Ernst Loof

German racing engineer who ran BMW’s sports-car department before the war, built Veritas, and in 1954 ran the Typ 528 roadster at the Nürburgring — the prototype later set aside for Goertz’s 507.

Ernst Loof was born in 1907 in Neindorf, near Oschersleben. In the 1920s he joined the Imperia works at Bad Godesberg in development and testing, and raced the firm’s 350 cc machines. He took the German 350 cc road championship in 1931, 1932 and 1934. In 1936 he moved to BMW and, until 1940, headed the sports-car department.

As BMW racing manager he prepared the works BMW 328s for the 1938 Mille Miglia, where A. F. P. Fane won the two-litre class and finished eighth overall. In March 1940 he took the team to Italy to recce the shortened Gran Premio Brescia course. On 28 April Fritz Huschke von Hanstein and Walter Bäumer won the race outright in the Touring Coupé; BMW also took the team prize, with the other works cars third, fifth and sixth.

After the war he constructed sports and racing cars as Veritas, largely from BMW 328 chassis and engines. At Hockenheim on 9 May 1948 Karl Kling won the two-litre sports-car race and Georg Meier the racing-car class. After Veritas GmbH failed in autumn 1950 he continued at the Nürburgring as Automobilwerke Ernst Loof until that firm too went under in 1953. BMW then rehired him.

BMW put him in charge of its Nürburgring research outstation in 1953. From 1954 he ran the first post-war sports-car prototype there, internally Typ 528 or 507a: a 502-based 2.6-litre V8 roadster with a Baur body, assembled under Fritz Fiedler’s board brief. He showed it at Bad Neuenahr in September 1954, where it won a gold medal. Max Hoffman rejected the design for America; Albrecht Graf von Goertz then drew the production 507. Loof died in Bonn on 3 March 1956 after a brain-tumour operation the year before.