Engines

Veritas

The Veritas car company was established by pre-war BMW engineers Ernst Loof and Lorenz Dietrich in 1947. They began by converting pre-war BMW 328 sportscars into racing machines - a common practice at the time - but then Loof began to develop his own engine design. The 2-liter six-cylinder unit was built for the company by Heinkel and the engines were quite successful in the late 1940s although it ran into trouble in 1950 and was closed down. Loof moved to new premises at the Nurburgring and started again, producing Veritas-Meteor chassis for Formula 2 racing. In June 1951 Paul Pietsch won the Eifelrennen event at the Nurburgring. With the World Championship being run to Formula 2 regulations in 1952 the pressure to be successful became too great and Veritas faded. The engines were used in Eugene Martin's Jicey and Toni Ulmen won the West German title in a works car but in 1953 fewer Veritas-Meteors were seen. Loof was forced to close the company and went back to BMW to work as a development engineer.