TWO
A World Beyond Russia
In 1926, when Zora was 16, his stepfather Josef was transferred to Berlin by the communist government. Josef’s role in Berlin was to ensure that machinery and technical assistance going to the Soviet Union from Germany went smoothly. It would prove to be Zora’s ticket to a place where he could apply his skills in one of the most technically advanced countries in the world.
Not that there weren’t problems in Germany, which in the late 1920s was in many ways as unstable as the Russia that Zora had left behind. Germany was still recovering from World War I; it was paying out massive reparations and was dealing with its own communist threat. Because the country was so fractured politically, it was ripe for the nationalistic rhetoric of a demagogue like Hitler in the early 1930s. But Zora didn’t know or care much about the political situation; he was more focused on what Germany might offer him. He found that the country had a tradition of engineering excellence, with many fine schools where a young man could get a solid education.
Zora didn’t follow his parents to Germany right away, but instead stayed behind in Russia to finish his studies at the University of Leningrad, which would give him a better chance of getting into the German school of his choice. A year later, Rachel and Josef sent for Zora, and in 1927 he received the required state permission to go to Germany.
In the fall of 1927, Zora enrolled at the University of Darmstadt, a polytechnical engineering school located several hundred kilometers from Berlin at Hessen on the Rhine. Zora had tasted the fulfillment that came from an engineering endeavor such as building the snowmobile, and he came to see academics not as Josef and Rachel exerting control over him, but as a means of getting closer to his own natural passions.
He began a curriculum in electrical engineering, not mechanical engineering--no doubt influenced by his mother as well as by his high regard for Josef. Zora may have felt a need to please Josef, and he was certainly impressed by his stepfather’s engineering accomplishments in building the hydroelectric plants in Russia.
As a prelude to his formal classroom training, Zora spent three months in Berlin as an intern at A.E.G., a German company similar to General Electric. The Germans were big believers in mixing practical experience with academic training. It was in that factory that Zora turned what might have been an inconsequential action by anyone else into a significant personal moment. The workers had just completed a big generator and Zora was told to climb on top and stencil in the serial number. As he did so, he added a "Z" to the end of the number, and suddenly the transformer became his. This seemingly insignificant action gave Zora a sense of accomplishment he claimed he never felt again. On one level, the move was somewhat risky and therefore attractive. As an intern, he could have been dismissed for such an action. On another level, stenciling his initials provided another sense of permanence in an unstable world. Like many graffiti artists throughout history, he did it to prove he was there--and in control of a large piece of machinery. Making his mark "Z" in this way was a prelude to other indelible actions in his life, many of them involving his imprimatur "Z."
During his internship at A.E.G., Zora indulged his love of motorcycles by finding part-time employment in a Berlin motorcycle shop on the Bühringstrasse. While in the shop one day, he noticed the antics of a motorcycle daredevil outside the store. The motorcyclist was riding up and down the cobblestone street while standing on the saddle of his bike. Zora wasted no time in going outside to see this man in action. After he got off the bike, the man introduced himself to Zora. "My name is Bernd Rosemeyer," he said, extending his hand confidently. Zora shook it and was struck by the aura of this man. Zora thought he looked like a motorcycle rider ought to look: slim and muscular, with Germanic blond hair and blue eyes. They started talking about bikes and racing cars and superchargers.
The two became fast friends, and during their off hours Rosemeyer taught Duntov how to slalom his bike around the steel supports of an elevated train in Berlin. The young German was full of big dreams and vivid war stories. He fascinated Zora with tales of riding the "Wall of Death," at an annual fair in Lingen, his hometown, located near the Dutch border. The "wall" was a large cylindrical chamber where riders could cheat gravity by riding up the side of the walls at high speed.
Shortly after Zora met him, Rosemeyer’s big dreams started to come true. Riding a 250-cc Zundapp, he won his first motorcycle race in 1931. He also won another 500-cc event that day and went on to win 11 grass races in 1931. Rosemeyer was distinguished company for Zora, not only for what he was then doing on bikes, but also
for what he was yet to do racing grand prix cars several years later.
During their time together at the shop, Rosemeyer encouraged Zora to buy something that Zora had dreamed about since the day of the solar eclipse back in 1914: a motorcycle. For Zora the image of seeing his first motorcycle at speed that day was still as strong as ever in his mind, and the reality of owning his own machine was tantalizing. So he began to search around and through his contacts at the dealership was able to find a special 350-cc German Diamant.
Now that he had a bike, it wasn’t enough for him to simply ride it on the street. He wanted to race it and feel the ultimate sense of control. After seeing what Rosemeyer could do on a bike, there was no end to Zora’s resolve. He had actually witnessed his first motorcycle race in Russia, on a street course close to his family’s apartment. There he saw a rider lose control and crash into a lamppost, fatally crushing his skull.
The prospect that one could die racing a motorcycle didn’t faze Zora. He began to enter open-class events at the Avus racetrack near Berlin. There, Zora was approached by a man named Schlesinger, who saw something he liked in the way Zora handled his bike and offered to teach him how to race. According to Zora, Schlesinger had at one time represented a German motorcycle manufacturer, Megola, which was the first and only motorcycle to use a radial engine actually located within the front wheel. The company went out of business in 1925. Whether Schlesinger in approaching Zora was hooked up with another company or whether he was acting on his own isn’t documented, but Zora took Schlesinger up on his offer and began meeting him every weekend at Avus for instruction.
Zora loved the feeling of being on a bike at high speed and the ability to lean into the turns as if the bike was an extension of himself--the ultimate feeling of control. "You only need your eyes," he said years later. "It’s stronger connection to my brain with motorcycle than connection with car." Racing his own motorcycle was everything he had imagined back in Russia after seeing his first motorcycle at speed.
Zora, however, neglected to tell his mother and stepfather about his racing, and when Schlesinger showed up at his home looking for Zora, his parents temporarily put a stop to his competitive career. But they couldn’t suppress Zora’s desire for long, and eventually he resumed his activities under their wary eyes. His mother, who now seemed to be more concerned about his safety than she had ever appeared to be in Russia, kept urging him to get into something safer. Zora persisted in his attempts to race, but Rachel refused to back off.
Eventually, Zora relented and bought a cycle-fendered "Bob" race-car, which had been built by an obscure, short-lived manufacturer of the same name. His Bob was one of only two built in 1922. It featured a three-speed transmission with a special U-joint that allowed the effective length of the drive shaft to change with the level of rear-wheel travel. It was powered by a 1500-cc. Siemens and Halske engine, which featured side valves and a three-bearing crankshaft. Zora described the sound of the engine as having boulders inside it. The Bob was set up for oval track racing. It was essentially a jalopy with no front brakes and fairly ineffective brakes at the rear. Despite its inadequacies as a practical street machine, Zora used it for everyday transportation.
Zora was a relative novice in cars and had only recently learned to drive a car because automobiles had been so rare in Russia. He learned in an Adler that belonged to a driving instructor. Zora claimed he already "knew" how to drive mentally--just like he "knew" how to swim in Russia; the Adler simply represented his first hands-on experience in a car. But this didn’t stop Zora from driving his Bob as hard as he could get away with on the streets of Berlin.
Zora went everywhere in the Bob and didn’t let long distances or poor weather hamper his enthusiasm for driving. When Zora began formal classes at Darmstadt in January 1928, he described driving with his stepfather Josef from Berlin to school at Darmstadt with two suitcases hung over the scuttle ahead of the cockpit like a pack mule and his tea kettle atop the Bob’s pointed tail. "No Russian ever travels without a tea kettle," Zora said.
"On flat-land the car was all right," said Zora, "but get in the mountains and I feel screeching tires, brakes and I look over to see my stepfather’s eyes rolling out."
The Bob was a disaster in the rain, with no windshield and a belly pan that held water. He eventually pulled the belly pan off the car altogether. Once in Berlin, he decided to amuse his passenger by using his feet to try to stop the car instead of the handbrake. He barely avoided ramming a bus in the process. Through it all, however, Zora was driving and having the time of his life--nothing was more worthwhile than this.
The Bob also gave Zora an opportunity to demonstrate his hands-on mechanical abilities with automobiles. Although he never had any formal training as a mechanic, he had a basic knowledge of how cars worked. He also wasn’t afraid to grab a set of tools and get to work to improve the power or handling of a car. He developed a reputation among his small circle of friends as a mechanic with "golden hands." Nothing pleased Zora more than diagnosing a problem, fixing it, and then driving the results of his labor. In so doing, he kept the ill-tempered Bob running, even though it required constant tinkering. In Zora’s case, the result was usually a faster car, something he took great pride in. He began to think more and more about making a living around cars.
Zora the Rake
Zora was emerging as a distinguished young man with dark curly hair still parted down the middle, a thin face and a distinguished nose. He was growing ever more confident that he could take on anything. He was rail-thin and tireless. He was no longer someone’s excess baggage the way he had felt growing up in Russia; he was a young adult calling his own shots now. He’d gallop up a flight of stairs two at a time as if he couldn’t wait to get to the top, a habit that he continued until the very end of his life.
But things were far from perfect. His academic troubles continued after he began his formal curriculum at Darmstadt. He had received admission on a special basis because he didn’t meet the school requirement for German literature. Zora flunked physics and had to take the course again, but fortunately--because of a "two strikes and you"re out" policy--he passed the second time. As had been the case in Russia, it was clear that the regimentation of the classroom didn’t appeal to him. He preferred hands-on projects like working on his car to abstract concepts that had at best only a theoretical connection to the real world.
Living alone in an off-campus apartment near the university at Darmstadt while his parents remained in Berlin, Zora used his newfound freedom to indulge an increasing curiosity about and attraction to the opposite sex. Although he had the brief infatuation with his cousin Tamara in his early teens, Zora was 16 when he began to notice a real change in his attitude about women. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Duntov had vivid memories of watching several servant girls bathe nude in a special bathhouse positioned over the Dvina River when he was just four.
Despite this earthy introduction to the female anatomy, Zora put beautiful women on a pedestal at a relatively early age, thanks to idealized notions that may have come out of literature. "In my association with women, if I find physical flaw in the woman, I"m not interested. Most of my friends lost their virginity when they were 14, but it didn’t bother me." His first crush was with a pretty girl named Nadia Niernberg who lived in Zora’s neighborhood in Leningrad. The problem was that she didn’t know who Zora was. He would often have a friend hoist him up so he could look inside the windows of her family’s flat. Once he was able to view the whole family having dinner. Because she didn’t respond to his gazes, he decided he had to get to her in a different way. Her brother was a middle-distance runner, so Zora decided to begin running to impress her. In the process, Zora became a competitive cross-country runner, but despite his game effort he never connected with Nadia.
While most women he encountered would agree that he was an extremely handsome man with his slender body, chiseled face and light blue eyes, Zora may have been insecure about his physical appearance. He claimed to relate to a character out of a Tolstoy novel, Childhood, Boyhood and Youth. "I identified with Nicolenka, the hero of Detschva [the title shortened and transliterated in German], so much so that when Nicolenka cried, I also cried. Nicolenka is ugly, so I conceived the idea that I too was ugly."
Zora’s self-image in this regard is surprising since he spent a great part of his life acting fearless. He appeared especially fearless around the opposite sex, but this inner insecurity may explain some of his later womanizing, if indeed that behavior was based on insecurity. Still, if he had any doubts about his looks, he generally kept them to himself.
It was while he was in school at Darmstadt that Zora slept with a girl for the first time. Her name was Jenny, a 20-year-old student from the town of Wupertal in the Rhineland. "She was beautiful girl," he said. "I had to be in love to do this," although "love" in Zora’s case seemed only to mean physical infatuation. Notwithstanding his verbal sentiments, Zora soon lost interest. After saying goodbye to Jenny, he took up with a girl named Dolly, but his enjoyment of women appeared to be in the chase rather than in the catch. Zora loved his freedom and at this point in his life wasn’t ready for the emotional baggage of a long-term relationship.
When it came to close male friends, Zora was still a bit of a loner. University life exposed him to a host of peers, many of whom were also from abroad since German universities at that time were still open to students of means from around the world. Zora mingled with students from Iran, Latvia, Lithuania and Azerbaijan but found he had little in common with them. He befriended a student from Azerbaijan, but soon into the relationship the student felt that Zora was acting a little too superior and decided to take him down a notch. One day while the two of them were in a park on the outskirts of the city, the student suddenly pulled out a gun. The two wrestled on the ground without it going off, and when Zora finally freed himself, he stormed back to town. He remained cool, his experiences with guns in Russia no doubt having hardened him to such situations. The student followed him, still pointing the gun, but he never pulled the trigger, sensing Zora’s outward lack of fear. This may have been another manifestation of Zora’s belief he was going to die young.
His nothing-to-lose attitude helped Zora become an enforcer with his friends. If some outsider harassed a buddy, Zora played cop and subdued the offending party with either his fists or a can opener. While not going around looking for trouble, he didn’t shy away from it either, and outsiders learned not to challenge him. Zora had learned early on that it was better to look fearless. It also made up for the fact that he was not physically large. Being cocky and self-assured was yet another means of exerting control in unpredictable situations, and most of the time it worked.
Zora first experienced flying when he took advantage of a special fare ticket offered to students at the university. He flew from Darmstadt to Berlin aboard a 12-passenger Junkers Tri-Motor and was struck by the perception of speed diminishing with altitude as well as the bright red glow of the exhaust coming out of the wing-mounted engines. He never lost his interest in aviation. In Berlin, he and some friends later fantasized about stealing an airplane and flying it west to Nova Scotia in order to break Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic speed record. After all, they mused, why should Lindbergh get all the glory?
The Mechanical Engineer
Unlike Russia, Germany was a hotbed of automotive technology and performance--thanks to companies like Daimler-Benz and Auto Union. After getting a taste of competition on his motorcycle and savoring his driving experiences in the Bob, Zora dwelled increasingly on the idea of being an auto engineer or a race driver. Engines fascinated Zora, especially the idea of how to make them more powerful. He read everything he could get his hands on regarding the subject of supercharging, which is the process of forcing more air into the engine’s combustion chambers than normal atmospheric pressure can deliver, thereby creating more power.
Given this interest, he finally followed his heart and enrolled at the University of Charlottenburg in Berlin, the German equivalent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the process, he switched majors from electrical to mechanical engineering in spite of his loyalty to Josef. "I was interested in the internal combustion engine," said Zora years later. "Therefore, by hook or by crook, I learn." It was a move that would lead him to a lifelong relationship with the automobile.
As at Darmstadt, his curriculum at Charlottenburg called for long internships between courses, which included a stint in Berlin with Rinne Motoren Gesellschaft, which manufactured small three-wheeled, motorized tricycles for delivery purposes. The tricycles used a five-hp two-cycle engine. One of Zora’s bosses suggested a new project for the student intern--"We have lots of moving vans drawn by horses; why not create a machine that does the same thing?" So Zora set out to create a tractor. For power, he chose a Deutz diesel engine mounted transversely and linked to the same three-speed transmission as used in the motorized tricycles. Zora designed a progressive clutch that slowly engaged to make it easy for inexperienced drivers to operate. For this purpose, Zora used a hydraulic cylinder from a door mechanism, which allowed the driver to depress the clutch, engage a gear and not worry about feathering the clutch pedal upon release. The tractor--which used a plywood body--had a five-kilometers-per-hour maximum speed and therefore could be operated on roads without a driver’s license. Zora’s design became known as the Primus tractor and saw limited production, an astonishing accomplishment for
an intern.
But tractors weren’t as exciting as race cars, and when Zora met Arnold Zoller in Berlin, the young Russian saw an opportunity to enter a much more exciting arena. Born in Switzerland, Zoller was a pioneer in supercharger engineering who became known for his work with two-stroke engines and vane-type superchargers in the 1920s and early 1930s. At the time Zora met him, Zoller was building a two-cycle, 12-cylinder, in-line racing engine that displaced 1,500-cc. Intended to compete against the likes of Mercedes-Benz, it featured a rotary compressor supercharger that Zoller himself had developed.
Apparently, Zora learned enough through Zoller and his own research to write a lengthy article on supercharging. He was just 24 when it was published in the May 1934 issue of Motor und Sport, now called Auto Motor und Sport. That Zora would approach Germany’s most prestigious automotive publication for an article suggests a high level of confidence in the subject matter. Zora hoped the end result would be a high-profile piece that would get him noticed in the German auto industry. The article stated that any engine could be supercharged. "I will attempt to clarify and show that the installation of a compressor does not increase demands on engine stability, that high ignition pressures, heads flying off and other things are only the outcome of incorrect thoughts and compressors installed under incorrect conditions," wrote Zora. At the time there was concern that supercharging would cause higher temperatures, higher stress and cylinder head failures, but Zora maintained that supercharging was practical if engine temperature and pressure were regulated.
Zora produced a number of formulas and calculations in the article that demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the subject matter. He also distinguished between supercharging, where the compressor delivers the nominal load quantity for each cylinder, and overcharging, where each cylinder is supplied not only with its piston displacement volume but also a greater mixture quantity under high pressure. Zora came out squarely in favor of supercharging as the best way to produce added performance without significant risk.
Zora’s new credentials as a published expert in supercharging earned him a chance to consult with Machinen Fabrik Der Buel in Gera, Germany, on the development of several superchargers. He also designed a supercharger for a 12-cylinder, two-cycle racing engine, and it’s a good bet he consulted with his new mentor, Arnold Zoller. But overall, the article did not provide the kind of long-term benefit that Zora had hoped.
Zora received his degree in mechanical engineering at Charlottenburg in June 1934. Thanks to his lengthy internships, it had taken him almost seven years from when he first enrolled at Darmstadt. Graduation provided him with additional hope that he might hook up with a major automotive concern, but no significant opportunities surfaced, and Zora bided his time in searching for his first career position. He spent most of his time in Germany in a succession of part-time jobs or consulting assignments. Although he did gain consulting roles, including the development of a V-12 Delahaye engine and six-cylinder Talbot power unit, most of his activities were anything but glamorous.
For several months, Zora worked as a testing engineer with Jlo (pronounced "Elo"), a company that manufactured two-stroke engines for chainsaws and later graduated into snowmobile engines. Zora had the unenviable task of conducting dynamometer tests in a poorly ventilated dyno room. Zora worked with a rope tied around his waist; if it went limp, a coworker would pull him out of the room. As a result of this assignment, he walked around with constant headaches. Still, he had to make a living somehow.
But without a real career to provide a focus to his life, Zora continued to dabble in whatever was interesting or entertaining to him at the time. He loved to play poker with his friends, and it was in character for him to risk whatever assets he had. Fortunately, he didn’t have much to lose.
Athletics also helped give him a sense of purpose. He continued to run in selected track events, exercised regularly and stayed in excellent physical condition despite the fact that he started smoking cigarettes. Instead of running cross-country, he developed into a sprinter. The 1936 Olympics were coming up in Berlin, and Zora claimed he was fast enough to qualify, but the Germans wouldn’t accept him because he was not a natural-born German.
Besides his running, Zora also continued to use his fists and took up boxing. He fought in an amateur boxing circuit in Berlin, with a scrappy style that kept him competitive. Boxing was dangerous and he could easily have been injured, but he didn’t care. During one match, he dislocated his shoulder after being slammed hard to the floor. As a friend was driving Zora home, another car hit them and Zora suffered a slight concussion and a broken arm. The incident proved to be the end of his boxing career.
Although his boxing days may have ended, Zora still took risks of a different order. In Berlin, he lived in a one-room apartment on the top floor of a three-story building. One of his favorite stunts was to climb out of his window and negotiate a six-inch-wide ledge to a hall window. One misstep would result in a three-story fall onto the street. Zora used the ledge as a faster route to a communal bathroom, but he also saw it as a kind of Russian roulette-style test. "In Russia, normally I hate to be on the high building, looking down, but I devise check on myself," he said. "If I did not manage and fall down, then it’s right to die, but if I accomplish it, that’s okay." Zora admitted that he often did this after having a few drinks. "If you cannot do it, what the hell, falling didn’t matter anymore."
While Zora frequently performed stunts in Russia like this to attract attention from his parents and friends, this situation was a little different. Such acts could be explained by the fact that he still didn’t have a career-style job or a major driving opportunity and therefore felt compelled to push the limits, just as he had on the frozen lake in Russia. Negotiating that ledge and surviving gave him a satisfaction he couldn’t get anywhere else at the time. Again, it made him feel more alive than anything he could imagine as he waited for the right break to come along in his life.
High Hopes for Racing
Zora’s hopes of landing a job with a major German racing concern soared after a friend from Charlottenburg named Hans Joachin Bernette introduced him to the Daimler race team at the Nürburgring, site of the German Grand Prix. At the time, Daimler-Benz had one of the most renowned racing operations in the world. Both Auto Union and Daimler-Benz were receiving massive financial support from the German government. Hitler’s support allowed both Daimler-Benz and Auto Union teams to crush once-proud marques like Alfa Romeo and Bugatti yet still provide exciting racing with a German car always in the winner’s circle.
Besides national pride, Hitler had a more expedient rationale behind his support of motor sports. The Versailles Treaty had prohibited the development of engines and components that could be used in bombers or fighter airplanes, but no such prohibition existed if the components were being built for a race car. According to author Peter Stevenson, "At least one competition car was powered by an engine that fit directly into a fighter aircraft."
The Daimler-Benz operation was led by Alfred Neubauer, the rotund racing czar of Daimler, long considered one of racing’s most influential team managers and a pioneer in many of the disciplines of the modern-day sport such as pit boards and signal flags. Wrote Beverly Rae Kimes in her Mercedes-Benz history, The Star and the Laurel, "Though he was the prototype of a racing manager, there was no one else quite like him. He had a voice like a bullhorn and a vast, 280-pound physique to match. His suits hung loosely around him as if afraid to get too close; people like to say his trousers were made out of old zeppelins. He could let out torrents of invective or behave like an amiable teddy bear. Neubauer became a fixture in grand prix racing pit lanes with his trademark overcoat, fedora and a necklace of stopwatches around his neck."
Besides Neubauer, the Mercedes team had three of the world’s top drivers: Rudi Caracciola, Hermann Lang and Manfred von Brauchitsch. Caracciola in particular was already a legend, having won the German Grand Prix four times prior to 1934.
Given credentials like these, Zora would have been satisfied with any toehold into the Daimler organization. Still, he made an impression on Neubauer, likely due to his published article on superchargers in Motor und Sport as well as his persistence and keen intellect. The bond was strong enough for the two to stay in touch, and their connection would bear fruit for Zora many years later.
Zora had similar hopes that Bernd Rosemeyer could help him get in the door at Auto Union. Rosemeyer was now using his motorcycle racing skills to come to grips with the rear-engined Auto Union grand prix cars. He got his first drive at the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring in 1935, where he barely lost to the Mercedes of fellow German Caracciola. During the years of 1935 through 1938, Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union traded places in the winners’ circles of all the major grands prix, with Caracciola and Rosemeyer usually sipping the champagne.
Rosemeyer was killed in January 1938 after setting a record speed on a German autobahn in German-sanctioned speed trials. Whether Zora expressed any personal outrage at Rosemeyer’s needless death isn’t known. And whether Zora would have accepted a position with either of these teams after what happened is a moot point. The fact is that Zora’s background would likely have prohibited such an offer. Zora, a Russian with Jewish bloodlines, would have almost no chance--regardless of the depth of his talent. Eventually, however, the Daimler-Benz team did bring on Englishman Richard Seaman, and Auto Union recruited Italian Tazio Nuvolari in the absence of suitable German talent, but both of these men already had established reputations behind the wheel. Duntov did not and would find that Germany was not the place for him to carve out a legend in motor sports. The fact that Zora was never fully accepted in Germany--at least in this capacity--would stay with him for many years to come and would give him an added incentive later in his career when he was in a position to compete against Germany.
From Bob to Bugatti
Without a glamorous racing career to attend to, Zora channeled his energies into his own projects. If he couldn’t land a position with a major racing team, at least he could upgrade his own set of wheels. He eventually replaced his Bob with a dilapidated 1922 Type 30 Bugatti he bought in
Berlin from a friend named Helmut Ruihul, whose father was a banker. The Bugatti was a major step up from the Bob. It had a 2.0-liter straight eight with two side-draft carburetors and chronically leaking hydraulic front brakes. Because the car was in such poor condition, Zora was able to buy it for a low price and then quickly got it into running order. As a result he had a relatively prestigious car to drive.
Zora’s style behind the wheel was hard and fast. He always pushed his cars to the limit of their performance. The streets of Berlin after a rainstorm provided a training ground for Zora to polish his car control techniques. "Berlin after rain is like ice rink," said Zora. During one of his "training sessions," Zora managed to break the rear axle on his stepfather’s Chevrolet after slamming the tail end into a curb.
Summer weekends were frequently spent on the Baltic Sea coast, and Zora grew fond of challenging other cars to impromptu races on the country roads. He claimed to be the nemesis of the Essex Terraplane, a small but powerful American car. Zora loved the feeling of taking on a competitor and finding out who had the better car or who was the better driver. Winning these road skirmishes provided enormous satisfaction for Zora--another manifestation of control--but they took their toll as well. One weekend, driving up to Herringsdorf, he lost a connecting rod in the Bugatti during a fender-to-fender duel. The car had to be transported back to Berlin on a flatbed truck, and Zora took the engine into his Berlin apartment to rebuild it.
Zora and Asia
While driving around in the Bob, Zora had met another racer who would become his best friend for life. He was a Russian Jew named Asia Orley (originally Owzarow). Orley was from a successful family and worked as a banker when he wasn’t racing. Despite his homely appearance, Orley attracted beautiful women. He was intelligent, witty and wealthy. Like Zora, he expressed himself through his actions and appeared not to get emotionally involved with the people in his life. That suited Zora just fine.
While Zora maintained close ties to Yura, Orley represented his closest soul mate outside the family. Yura, who was still living with Rachel and Josef in Berlin, was a regular participant in Zora and Asia’s activities--often at Zora’s insistence and usually to Rachel’s chagrin.
Concerned about the treatment of Jews by the new Nazi government, Orley moved to Paris in 1933. Zora remained in Berlin with Yura and his parents. Once in France, Orley started racing MGs and invited Zora to join him. Zora was happy to oblige, often commuting from Berlin on race weekends.
Since Orley had money, he could afford to buy competitive cars, and the contemporary MGs were very competitive. Unlike the relatively affordable British sports cars of the 1950s and 1960s, the MGs of the 1930s were sophisticated and expensive race cars with graceful bodies and powerful supercharged engines. Over time, the Orley stable included an MG J3, a Zoller-supercharged MG Q and an 1,100-cc Magnette (six-cylinder). Since Orley had the most money, he did most of the driving. Zora would take over if the car was ailing or in a tight situation during a race, when more driving talent was required.
Zora was impressed and amused by Asia’s imagination and ability to run a scam, which brought the two even closer together. Orley constructed elaborate ruses to keep his racing secret from his parents, including the use of assumed names. Orley’s propensity to crash necessitated his keeping his parents in the dark.
Zora also loved Orley’s daredevil nature, which was not unlike his own. A typical example of Orley’s approach to driving was an incident during a 24-hour endurance race, the Bol d"Or at Montlhéry, the beautiful high-speed banked track outside of Paris. Orley was driving the Magnette when it caught fire. The flames chased him out of the cockpit to the tail and eventually out of the car altogether. As he abandoned the steering, he slid from the tail to the pavement at approximately 80 to 100 mph. The car continued toward the inside of the banked track and miraculously stopped without hitting anything. Orley managed to get up off the pavement and grab a fire extinguisher placed thoughtfully on the inside of the track. Then he collapsed, suffering from both fire and friction burns.
As much as he admired Orley’s spirit behind the wheel, Zora loved even more the yarn Orley spun in explaining his injuries to his parents: "I fell deep asleep with a lit cigarette, the cigarette set the mattress on fire and the ensuing smoke was suffocating me. I jumped through the window, but the room was on the second floor. I hit the ledge, which inspired a rotary motion, and I landed on the ground face down."
Accidents aside, the racing continued. That same year, 1933, Zora accompanied Orley to London to investigate the purchase of another MG Magnette. This black roadster was a race car/street car hybrid. When Zora saw it, he was overjoyed with the beauty of the car. No matter how good his cars were, Asia was still Asia behind the wheel, and the results were seldom any different. But for Zora, Asia represented a way to stay close to racing--whether Zora drove or not. In the absence of any other more immediate options, Zora stayed with Asia.
The Social Side
Zora’s partnership with Orley offered more than just a race car ride. Orley’s banking connections had exposed Zora to an all-new social circle of influential people. By that time, Zora had matured into a handsome, self-confident young adult who was learning the finer points of how to appeal to attractive members of the opposite sex.
As a result, Zora was seeing a wide range of women. He was dating a woman named Valla Kudash, whom he had met one night while walking the ledge of his apartment building. He also had a relationship with a woman named Dolly and was seeing Rotraud Richter, an attractive German actress, but none of these women seemed to have any real impact on him.
During Whitsun holiday a few weeks after Easter, several of Zora’s friends went up to Herringsdorf, a popular resort on the Baltic Sea coast. At the beach, they noticed a particularly attractive blonde, blue-eyed teenage girl practicing acrobatics and cartwheels on the warm sand. She got even more attention as she sprinted into the surf despite the fact that it was May and the water was still brisk. Their hormones racing, the boys struck up a conversation with the girl, charmed by her athletic good looks and outgoing demeanor. After chatting for a while and hoping for a reason to meet again, they finally suggested getting together later that summer.
Come August, the same group--this time with Zora in tow--spotted the girl in Berlin and remembered her instantly. She was walking near a theater on her way to a date. The young men approached her and invited her to a cafe that featured music and dancing. The girl accepted and took a chair at a table right across from Zora. He looked into her eyes and she looked into his. It was August 9, 1935.
The girl was Elfi Wolff. That night, she commented to her household nurse that she had met someone that day. "He was beautiful, with his dark hair and blue eyes," she said. "He was so confident. I think it’s going to last a long time."
Elfi, short for Elfriede, was from a well-to-do Jewish family in Berlin. Her father, William
Wolff, had married Clara Lapoehn in 1914 and ran one of Germany’s largest greeting card companies, called Hermann Wolff. The company owned four factories in Germany, including three in Berlin and one in Dresden. Elfi was the oldest of four children. The entire Wolff family was well schooled in the arts. Grandmother Wolff was a Shakespeare fan, and William was a talented writer who composed poems and plays for Elfi to perform. He also played the mandolin and believed he would have been a successful actor except for his father’s demand that he work in his factory. Elfi was a natural-born beauty whose first love was gymnastics. She also liked modern and primitive dance, for which she had been schooled in France.
Zora was taken by this lovely teenager and invited her to go sailing with him on Wannensee Lake, outside Berlin. She in turn was moved by this handsome, worldly Russian. Soon she was frequenting Zora’s street-level one-room apartment. Zora quickly gave her a key. On one occasion, she climbed atop a freestanding wardrobe, waited for him to come home and
then playfully jumped him when he came in the door.
Fortunately, Elfi’s acrobatic school was close to where Zora lived so they could see each other often. Feeling much more of an attachment to this girl than one of his typical one-night stands, he decided not to rush her into bed. He waited three weeks.
But intimacy didn’t necessarily equate with fidelity. This led to complications when more than one woman was shar
ing his bed. Zora proudly described one particular episode: "At the time, I had a delightful though somewhat under-aged girlfriend (Elfi) whom I occasionally entertained in my room. However, I also had had a torrid night with a stray girl and my tracks most definitely needed immediate covering. Since I had earlier blown the engine on my Bugatti, I kept in my room the cast-aluminum engine box containing the camshaft and its 24 actuating fingers. Out came the Bugatti casting covered with castor oil. I deposited this component on the bed and my honor, such as it was, remained unsullied."
Duntov wasn’t as unsullied as he thought, however. "I knew he was cheating on me from day one," Elfi recalls. Still she found the Russian irresistible. She would spell out "Zora" in Russian with bandages on her body and then tan herself in the sun to brand herself as his girl. She had a chronically nervous stomach from always waiting for his telephone calls. She often stretched out on the carpet to get rid of the horrible pain, then seek comfort and advice from girlfriends. When one of them asked whether Zora had any money and Elfi replied "no," the friend told her confidently that he’d be back.
Early on, she likened Zora to a little devil. While visiting Austria early in the courtship, Elfi picked up a little devil on a broomstick that reminded her of Zora. She gave it to him as a good luck charm.
Her insecurity about the relationship prompted sometimes-absurd requests to Zora to demonstrate his love. She had him stand in the window of his Berlin apartment every morning between 8:00 a.m. and 8:15 a.m. to wave at a passing commuter train, just in case she was on one of those trains. Zora felt it was ridiculous to be standing in front of an open window every morning watching the blur of a train going by. When Elfi wasn’t on the train, she’d have her girlfriends look for him. Zora always imagined the train’s passengers thinking "Look at this idiot in the window."
Somehow, the relationship thrived against the backdrop of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe. Berlin had something for everyone--the arts, theaters, and concerts. One nightclub that Zora and Elfi frequented contained a large swimming pool with artificial waves called Wellenbad. Elfi was a regular at Kadeve, a department store of the magnitude of today’s Bloomingdale’s in New York or Harrod’s in London. She also began to work as a department store model while she attended Westend Schule, a girl’s school.
The city also began to develop a seamy underside, with dozens of cabarets that featured wanton nudity and masochism. There was also plenty of sex on the streets--prostitutes walking around in shoes that tied up to the knees with color-coded strings advertising their specialty. In all, Berlin was a bizarre fantasyland about to turn into a nightmare.
By 19371938, Berlin was becoming increasingly inhospitable for both Zora and Elfi. Tensions steadily increased as Jews were systematically routed out of their homes, and Nazi thugs roamed the streets and the clubs. Russian-born Zora began to feel increasingly unwelcome in a racist land, but he was quite used to unrest in his life and took the attitude that this too would pass.
The signs were getting more difficult to ignore, however. One day, Zora and Elfi took his Bugatti for a Sunday afternoon drive out to a forest area outside Berlin called Grunewald and were getting passionate in the car when a Nazi Brown Shirt pulled up behind them and started harassing the young lovers. Zora responded by rushing at the Nazi with the starter crank from the Bugatti in his hand. The Nazi fled, but the experience was yet more evidence that Germany was not a place where he could stay.
Asia Orley had already reached this conclusion, having moved to Paris. And Zora--still restless to do something with his life--began to spend much more of his time in the French capital, even though Elfi remained in Berlin. The most important thing in Zora’s life was not Elfi or the political situation in Germany. He wanted to make his mark in auto racing and
put his personal stamp on an automobile. Given his disappointment in not being offered a position with Mercedes or Auto Union, he felt he would have to forge his own reputation as a race car designer and driver. Asia Orley’s money would give him the opportunity to do that.
In Paris, sitting in a bar on the Champs Élysées, Zora and Asia would smoke cigarettes and talk about all the possibilities in racing, sketching out their visions on the tablecloths. Looking inward, Zora knew he was a very good engineer and wanted to use his skills to build race cars. He had long discussions with
Orley and others willing to listen about his compressor (supercharging) theory.
It was during these conversations that the decision to build his own car was born. It was by far the most important project Zora had yet undertaken and would have profound implications for later in his career. The car would be a racer, of course, but Zora had in mind a completely new concept--something where he could apply his knowledge about compressors. Asia and Zora started to look for a car around Paris and found an old Talbot racer, which they purchased as the basis for Zora’s machine. Joining them were two other friends from Russia, Misha Gerschenovitisch and Minia Eider, who would help build the car. Then they found a basement, which became their workshop, and annexed their favorite Paris bar as their unofficial office, often bringing engine parts into the establishment, much to the consternation and amusement of the waiters and bartenders.
During April of 1935, Zora and Asia took a trip down to Monte Carlo to see the Grand Prix. Peering at the beautiful Maseratis and other grand prix cars, the two envisioned their car someday competing in the same arena. Upon returning to Paris, the team reworked the entire Talbot to their own specifications. Zora designed new connecting rods, a new crankshaft and new valves. He likened the layout of the engine to an Offenhauser Indy car motor, which necessitated disassembling the whole thing in order to change a valve. Zora also devised a second water pump
to aid engine cooling.
Zora possessed a great intuition for building race cars and performed some very accurate calculations, but he and his team were battling almost impossible odds. Unlike a well-funded factory team, they had no outside help. They had to fabricate parts and they lacked the proper tools. Money was a constant obstacle and Asia’s original budget was long gone, while expenses soared. The bills kept mounting and Asia began to feel the pressure.
Their goal was to get the car built and enter it in the Grand Prix de Picardie in June 1935. The team worked deep into the night, every night--by now nothing else mattered. Finally the engine was mounted into the chassis, complete with the two large compressors Zora had sourced from Germany. The car was gorgeous. Because it represented Zora’s thinking, it was named "the Arkus." It even had "Arkus" embossed onto the cylinder head covers.
Zora and Orley were so enthusiastic about their modifications to the engine that they visited Talbot and told the company of their plans. The Talbot people looked on in disbelief as Zora told them he could get more than 150 horsepower out of the engine. Talbot promised him they would test the motor themselves to verify the horsepower, but the engine was never in a proper condition to test it. A litany of problems kept popping up. Chronic water leaks caused Zora to reassemble the engine several times.
Then there were other problems. Zora determined that a valve seat insert needed to be installed, so he used some liquid oxygen to cool down the block and heads to be able to install the insert. After successfully completing the job, he had some excess liquid oxygen, so the guys in the shop decided to conduct a little experiment. They set up a magneto and a little bit of gasoline as a means to ignite the liquid oxygen. But the magneto didn’t ignite the mixture, so Misha got closer and tried to ignite it with a burning twig. The explosion blew out a gasoline pump, shattered all the windows of the shop and propelled shrapnel in every direction. One of the pieces embedded itself in Misha’s right leg. Misha was taken to a hospital in Paris, where the doctor wanted to amputate. But Zora--showing the headstrong nature he inherited from his mother--wouldn’t let him. To Zora, being an amputee was a death sentence. So the doctor took piece after piece of metal out of Misha’s leg while trying to reduce the danger of blood poisoning. Misha’s recovery took three weeks in the
hospital, and afterwards he had to learn how to walk again. But thanks to Zora, he still had his leg.
The team’s woes were not over. Several weeks later, Asia accidentally dropped a bolt into the engine. According to Asia’s diary of the episode, Zora had a look of pain on his face as he contemplated many more hours spent tearing down the engine once again. He didn’t say a word; he just walked away and sat down. Fortunately, one of the mechanics was able to retrieve the bolt. Weeks later, Asia was towing Zora in the Arkus when it suddenly caught fire. The two tore off their clothes to try to smother the fire as if it were more important than family. At Montlhéry, Zora had difficulty getting the engine started, and they spent hours pushing the car just to turn the pistons and crank. Almost miraculously the engine started, so Zora took it out on the circuit for a few laps. But the continuing problems prevented them from ever racing the car.
The Arkus was eventually sold to their mechanic, and Zora and Asia returned their attention to Asia’s stable of MGs. For Zora, the Arkus was a rude lesson in trying to run his own racing operation. Clearly it made more sense to link up with an established manufacturer with greater experience and resources.
But the Arkus project wasn’t a total loss. Beneath the veneer of failure was an emerging engineer learning through trial and error, taking risks and bringing his ideas to life. The lessons from the Arkus would not be forgotten. Building cars like the Arkus was exactly what Zora wanted to do with his life. It gave him the sense of control he had been seeking from the time of his youth in Russia. Now it was a matter of finding another place to do it.
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