While rocketry was gradually gaining credence throughout the world, it was unusually popular in Germany, where a rocket society, Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (VfR), had been formed. Max Valier, a member of the VfR and a great promoter of rocketry, was eager to encourage the public's interest and to raise funds for the VfR. He approached automobile manufacturer Fritz von Opel, who saw great potential in the concept of a rocket car.
Valier also contacted another rocket experimenter, Friedrich Sander, whose simple, smokeless powder rockets were more reliable and less dangerous than the innovative liquid-fuel rockets. Valier felt that they might work well enough on a car to draw a little more attention to rocketry.
The first version of the rocket car had two Sander rockets attached to an Opel auto chassis. At its test run, this car of the future rolled down the track at a miserable nine miles per hour. The next car was rigged with six rockets, and the one after that with eight. By the time the number reached twelve, the Opel rocket car was topping 70 miles an hour and attracting the attention of the press. Fritz von Opel then built a long, sleek machine which he called the Opel Rak II. The car had an open cockpit, a little crescent windshield, and two stubby wings that sprouted from its sides to prevent it from flipping over. It was fitted with twenty-four Sander rockets.
On May 23, 1928, at the Avus racetrack in Berlin, Opel Rak II hurtled across the racetrack at 125 miles per hour while a hushed and amazed crowd looked on. Speculation about rocket trains, planes, ships, and even sleds and bikes was suddenly everywhere. Products and advertisements of all kinds assumed rocket motifs. Huge crowds gathered to watch drivers of rocket vehicles of every kind skid, crash and explode on fields, tracks and pastures all over Germany. Reporters came to christen all the hoopla Raketenrummel -- rocket racket.
Opel and Max Valier had a falling out and parted ways. Valier died in 1930 when one of the liquid-fuel engines for a rocket car he was working on exploded. Opel went on to build the Opel Rak III which topped 180 miles per hour in an unmanned test.
