The 'refounding' of Auto-Union in Ingolstadt in 1949 disguised the fact that the prewar Auto-Union company was defunct and de-registered and the new Auto-Union was a new commercial and legal entity. The new Auto-Union was largely successful in re-establishing contact with the former overseas sales and service organizations. However, in a few instances this was not possible.
In East Germany, the nationalized IFA company had gained a year's head start over Auto-Union and production of the prewar IFA F8. To meet East Germany's need for foreign currency, IFA re-established contact with many of DKW's foreign agents and began exporting. In 1948 the prewar DKW F8, now the IFA F8, went on sale in the UK, Holland, France, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
When Auto-Union of Ingolstadt attempted to sell the new DKW in Finland they discovered that their former selling agent, was now an IFA agent, but held an exclusive rights to the DKW name in Finland. Negotiations to recover the name or become a joint agent proved unsuccessful, so Auto-Union was left with no alternative but the rebrand the car. The name they chose was Donau, the German name of the Danube, in honour of the river that passes Ingolstadt. In Finland, DKWs were sold as the Donau up until 1960, when Auto-Union was able to recover the name.
No comments:
Post a Comment