Diecast collections

It goes a little further than this. If Mercedes and Auto-Union had attempted to start with a blank car in international competition, they would have been declined to compete, because the car would not have been in their appropriate colour. But in heraldry, white and silver are interchangable. Being statefunded by the nazi regime, and kind of to symbolize a new era, they were ordered to paint the cars silver. No, they were not bare metal, they were not polished, they were painted silver from the beginning! The old legend of the car being either sanded down or the paint being chemically stripped, because the cars were a tad overweight is just that: a legend. Protocols show the cars were well under the weight limit, press reports from outside Germany describe the cars painted silver with a black Mercedes or AU-logo (which are clearly visible on pictures, handformed aluminium shows a certain pattern which you'd also see on the old photographs, and you just don't polish a body over night. I forgot the guy's name who made the research about ten years ago, but the story Mercedes officially still tells today has been debunked in the meantime. They probably still stick to it, because it sounds so good, and they're probably not to eager to admit they laid well in bed with the nazi regime. Mercedes and Auto Union got no less than a quarter million Reichsmark each, which put them lightyears ahead from their competitors in regard to resources.