Born to a family expelled from his birth place, Krásná Lípa in Czechoslovakia, Gerhard Mitter grew up in Stuttgart and trained as a mechanic.

To finance his racing activities Gerhard sold DKW three cylinder two stroke engines to his fellow Formula Junior competitors.

The related Wartburg and unrelated Saab 3 cylinder 2 stroke motors were also campaigned in Formula Junior.

From what I have been able to establish Gerhard built his first DKW powered Formula Junior car in 1959 racing it to at least one third place finish, at the Eifelrennen meeting on the Nürburgring in July 1959.

It would appear Gerhard sold this car to Herbert Ott for the 1960 season and built today’s featured DKW powered car for himself.

From the data available it would appear Gerhard drove his Mitter (60) DKW to wins at Rottach-Egern and Berchtesgaden (Hill Climb) before switching to a rear engined DKW powered Lotus 18 with which he won the hill climbs at Freiburg, Deggendorf and Pirmasens to secure the 1960 German Formula Junior championship.

Gerhard went on to win three consecutive European Hill Climb Championships driving for Porsche from 1966 – ’68 he also drove a Porsche with Udo Schütz to win the 1969 Targa Florio, three months later he was killed at the wheel of a Formula 2 BMW during practice for the German Grand Prix.

Rudolf Ernst is seen in these photo’s at the wheel of the #93 Mitter DKW at last years VSCC Spring Start meeting at Silverstone.

Thanks for joining me on this “Zweitakt Dreizylinder” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at a sweet sounding Shadow. Don’t forget to come back now !