DKW Auto-Union Project: June 2018

DKW made its name in the prewar period with its range of small but sturdy budget cars. The threat from Volkswagen to the budget car market led the company to develop the DKW F9 as a budget middle-class car positioned marginally above the Volkswagen. The war however threw all of these plans into disarry. When the company re-established itself in West Germany after the war, it found it was not able to revive its mainstay prewar F8 model, which would have found a ready market in transport starved Germany. Instead, by an improbable series of circumstances, Auto-Union was able to restart personal vehicle production with the F89P New Meisterklasse, which combined the prewar F8 running gear (700cc twin-cylinder engine) with the body of the F9. Although slightly under-powered, the New Meisterklasse definitely fitted into the budget middle-class range, where it competed with the similarly spec'd Volkswagen.

The New Meisterklasse was a strong seller, especially among existing DKW customers. DKW cars were appreciated for their high-build quality, ease of maintenance and bulletproof engine. Nevertheless, Auto-Union management recognized that a transport hungry market would be ripe for a very cheap budget car that would appeal to customers who wanted more than a motorcycle but could not yet afford a proper car. Observing the success of other company's microcars, such as the "Messerschmitt", "Zündapp Janus" and "Isetta BMW", in 1952 the company initiated a microcar project that would be run out of the motorcycle department and would be designated "sidecar project."

The motorcycle department took the project brief quite literally and developed a sidecar attachment for the company's range of motorcycles. The problem however, was that the sidecar was too heavy for the present range, which maxed out at only 250ccs. The motorcycle team pressed management to develop a new, more powerful range of motorcycles with engines of between 350 and 500ccs. A 350cc model was developed but DKW would never build a 500cc motorcycle in the postwar period.

Karl Jenschke of Ingolstadt's central design office took control of the project. Jenschke reasoned that the type of customer who would consider a microcar would not be off-put by such a vehicles slow speed and low-quality fittings. Jenschke and his team drew a number of conceptual sketches for a three wheeled bubble car. The concept had no doors, but instead the whole roof could be lifted to provide access. With modest streamlining and assuming a body of lightweight plastic weighing no more than 250kg, the microcar was envisaged to carry a payload of 225kgs at a speed of 75km/h.

A wood and metal frame was constructed to test the concept for habitability. The STM 1 had no real doors, access being by lifting the whole of the roof and the windshield. A rear-mounted stationary engine of between 200 to 350ccs would provide the power-plant, which gave the project its name - "STM" being the abbreviation of "Stationär Motor."

The design committee agreed to proceed with a three-wheeled microcar, but then suggested that a four-wheeled microcar would be a better investment. The project team agreed to examine both options and this is where things began to go awry. The four-wheel microcar would quickly expand to become a more substantial vehicle than the original microcar concept. The microcar would now be powered by a transversely mounted, air-cooled two-cylinder engine with a displacement of 400ccm and an output of 15 hp. The drive was via the front wheels. Entry continued to be via a large dome that opened to the rear. The driver sat in the middle, with the two passengers offset to the rear.

Auto-Union management did not like the lifting dome access and so the car went back for remodeling as a two-door, which saw the car expand in size and weight further. This model was designated the STM II (see photo below). Auto-Union management revealed itself to be in a state of confusion about the purpose of the STM project. The design committee were dissatisfied with the vehicle, noting its spartan fittings, generally engine performance and questioned whether the car would ever find a market with any of DKW’s prewar customers accustomed to the high build quality of F7 and F8. Nor could the car conceiveably compete with the Volkswagen, DKW's main rival. Shortly thereafter Jenschke left the company, taking much of his design team with him.

Jenschke was soon replaced by another old Auto-Union hand – Eberan von Eberhorst (below) - who had taken over from Ferdinand Porsche has the technical director of the Auto-Union race team in 1937. Eberhorst was responsible for the design of the Auto-Union Type D racers that dominated the Grand Prix circuit immediately before the Second World War. Eberhorst bought with him his own design team.

Under Eberhorst the project was transformed from a microcar to a light-weight budget car. The car’s dimensions increased to accommodate 4 passengers in relative comfort. The biggest technical challenge remained manufacturing Duraplast panels of consistent thickness and structural rigidity, but by 1956 Eberhorst’s team had largely resolved the problem. A series of pre-production cars were put together for road trials. All the cars were put though grueling 80,000km tests which demonstrated the Duraplast paneling was viable under all road conditions. All of this effort however would ultimately come to naught. In 1956 and 57, managing director, Dr Richard Bruhn and his successor, Dr Carl Hahn – both stalwarts of the resurrected Auto-Union – retired. Their final years with the company had witness executive paralysis and confusion, leaving the company directionless and sliding towards insolvency. Former technical director, William Werner, had been bought back to Auto-Union from the Dutch Berini company in 1956 and stepped into the managing directorship with the promise to take a firm hand on wheel.

From the start, Werner had his eyes set on the STM which had been in the design phase since 1949 and seemed to him no closer to having a production ready car. Werner viewed the cars Duraplast body with disdain, stating German customers would never trust a car body made of plastic. Eberhorst’s team however had finally shown that Duraplast was viable and would find a market with customers – and this would be proven in the market with the later introduction of the Duraplast bodied AWZ P70 from East Germany and fibreglass bodied Chevrolet Corvette from the USA. Nevertheless, Werner immediately cancelled the STM project and Eberhorst and his team would follow Jenschke out the door.

While Werner had a reputation for ruthlessness, his decision to cancel the STM project right at the moment it had finally demonstrated success wasn’t down to professional spite. Duraplast DID have a major drawback and one that would ultimately handicap East Germany’s vehicle industry – it required specialised heated panel presses, and in order to build the STM in sufficient volumes to make production economical, Auto-Union would have needed to purchase hundreds of new panel presses and substantially change its production operations. Werner and the company’s financiers recognised Auto-Union did not have the capital for this type of expenditure. The STM was ultimately a fool’s errand and a dead end.

State funding required the prototype to be presented to a government commission for evaluation in August 1956. However, in early 1957 there was a change in leadership at Auto-Union and the new general director, William Werner, challenged the safety of the car's mixed plastic and steel construction. In another exercise of the chronic indecision at Auto-Union, which had several years earlier aborted the promising FX project, Werner put an end to the project.

Auto-Union had lost more than a decade of automobile development with nothing to show for it. The dealer network, which had been shown the STM preproduction cars and assured of a production date in 1958, were outraged to learn that the new car would not be available. With typical energy, Werner designed a completely new car for presentation at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1957. The resultant DKW 600 was largely based on the STM running gear (chassis, wheels and 600cc twin cylinder engine) but fitted with a steel body with contemporary styling. The display car did not actually run but was a much better-looking vehicle than the STM and the dealer network were placated by Werner’s promises that it would be available the following year. Development of an actual functioning car would actually take two years, by which time the microcar era was over. Auto-Union had missed the boat, but thanks to Werner’s foresight the DKW 600 had been completely upgraded to a budget middle-class vehicle with a newly designed 750cc three-cylinder engine and much improved fittings. The DKW Junior would the last great success for Auto-Union.

The STM III car disappeared but ten years later the prototype STM III was discovered in the depths of a reserve at VW in Wolfsburg. The car had been used as a test bench on the private VW test circuit, but its condition was still good enough to undertake a restoration. This is the car that you can see today at the Ingolstadt museum. This late STM III prototype contained several stylistic elements of the future DKW "600", which would go on to become the "Junior", such as the fold of rear wing, shape of the windshield, rear window and 12 inch wheels. The indecision of the Auto-Union leadership would continue with the inability to develop a model capable of succeeding the aging "1000." Despite the "F102” and given the withdrawal of Daimler-Benz from Auto-Union, VW would come to sound the death knell for cars with a two-stroke engine.