Audi: Celebrating 100 years of DKW

Audi has a very long and interesting history. Part of it is the brand DKW which is now celebrating their 100th anniversary.

A legend of the automotive world is celebrating its centenary this year: DKW. The company from Zschopau in Saxony originally planned to build steam-driven vehicles, yet ultimately rose to fame courtesy of its two-stroke engine. DKW had already become the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer in the late 1920s, and then in the 1930s was the first company to mass-produce vehicles with front-wheel drive. DKW produced the pre-war period’s answer to Volkswagen, the F-series small cars, in astonishing numbers. Audi Tradition is marking the anniversary of its predecessor brand by entering DKW classic cars in a whole host of events, including the Mille Miglia and the Gran Premio Nuvolari in Italy, the Concours d’Elegance in Bergerac, France, the Silvretta Classic and Ennstal Classic in Austria, and of course the “100 Years of Rasmussen” festival in the town of Zschopau on 26 August.

In 1907 the Dane Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen set up a small metal goods factory in Zschopau in the Ore Mountains. After initially manufacturing exhaust-steam oil separators, steam-engine equipment and other metal goods, he started to experiment with steam-driven cars in 1916. The project did not continue past the prototype phase. What did remain, however, was the brand name derived from this project: DKW, the abbreviation of the German word for steam-driven vehicle (Dampfkraftwagen). In 1919 Rasmussen built a two-stroke engine, which he marketed as a toy engine under the name “Des Knaben Wunsch” (literally: “The Boy’s Wish”). This mini-engine was enlarged and used as an auxiliary bicycle engine, and subsequently in 1922 was made into a genuine motorcycle engine known as “Das Kleine Wunder” (“The Small Miracle”). Under the auspices of Jшrgen Skafte Rasmussen with Manager Carl Hahn and Chief Designer Hermann Weber, DKW developed into the world’s most important motorcycle manufacturer in the course of the 1920s – in 1928 the Zschopau plant was the largest motorcycle factory in the world. In that very year Rasmussen took over the Audi car factories in Zwickau, and two years later commissioned the Audi designers with the production of a small car with the following design features: a DKW two-cylinder two-stroke motorcycle engine with a displacement of 600 cc, a unitary wooden body with leatherette upholstery, front and rear swing axles and front-wheel drive. The DKW Front was thus born, becoming one of the best-selling and most popular German small cars of its time.

Related news: GermanCarBlog, P4MR, Audi

Source: AudiWorld

Audi: Celebrating 100 years of DKW

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