Friday 26th January 1917

Born on this day, Edgar Barth, a DKW motorcycle racer who later switched to BMW sports cars and moved from the Communist block to West Germany in the mid-1950s. Barth won the 1959, 1963 and 1964 European Mountain Championships for Porsche and the 1959 Targa Florio. He had four outings in the German Grand Prix, the first with a factory Porsche Formula 2 car and the last in 1964 with a Cooper-Climax. Nine months later he succumbed to cancer. His son Jurgen also became a Porsche factory sports car driver and won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1977 with Jacky Ickx and Hurley Haywood.