Robert Eberan von Eberhorst

Robert Eberan von Eberhorst (23 October 1902 – 14 March 1982), later known as Robert Eberan-Eberhorst, was a noted Austrian engineer, who designed the Auto Union Type D Grand Prix motor racing car.

Early life Born into Austrian nobility, the family shortened its name when the nobility was abolished in Austria in 1918. He studied at the Vienna Technical University until in 1927, where he earned an engineering master's degree. Later that year he joined the Institute for Automotive Engineering at Dresden Technical University as a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate. He was responsible for turning Chief Engineer Porsche's ideas in physical reality, and his early contributions to Auto Union's successes included development of side skirts and aerodynamic bodywork along the belly of the record breaking streamliner car, additions that were some of the earliest experiments with ground effect downforce to have been applied to a car. and on the Jowett Jupiter chassis. In 1950, he moved to Aston Martin to design a pure sports-racing car, the DB3, his brief being to produce a car that would be quick enough to give the 2.6-litre straight six a chance of outright wins. Whilst at Aston Martin Eberhorst published an article in The Automobile Engineer entitled "Roll Angles". This theoretical study followed Maurice Olley's paper "Road Manners of the Modern Car" and established ex-Rolls-Royce engineer Olley and Eberhorst as two of only a handful of engineers capable of mathematically defining the essential factors in car handling. Eberhorst's contribution was to show how the several constants in Olley's complex equations could be established experimentally.

In 1953 Eberhorst returned to Germany as General Manager for Technical Development at a reviving Auto Union. In 1956 he moved to the Battelle Institute in Frankfurt as Head of Mechanical Engineering and four years later he took over responsibility for the Combustion Engines and Automotive Engineering Institute at Vienna University. He retired from there in 1965 although continuing to author important technical papers.