Tracta was a French car maker based in Asnières , Seine, that was active between 1926 and 1934. They were pioneers of front-wheel-drive vehicles.
48-479: The business was directed and cars were designed by the engineer Jean-Albert Grégoire , who controlled the business, with financial support from his friend Pierre Fenaille. The cars were initially built in small numbers for competition use, but they were exhibited and offered for road use at the 1927 Paris Motor Show . They used a front-wheel-drive system featuring Grégoire's patented Tracta constant-velocity joint and sliding pillar independent front suspension and
96-456: A Mercedes-Benz Diesel engine and was renamed a Mercedes-Benz in 1975. During the late 1920s and until WWII broke out, DKW was both the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer, as well as Europe's pioneer of front-wheel drive automobiles with their successful 1931 and later DKW Front models, before the 1932 Adler Trumpf and the 1934 Citroen Traction Avant . In 1931, Arnold Zoller started building split-singles and this concept made DKW
144-680: A live axle with quarter-elliptic leaf springs at the rear. 1100, 1200, 1500 and 1600 cc engines made by S.C.A.P. were available with optional Cozette supercharger . The 1500 cc car was claimed to reach 80 mph. The first cars were made in a workshop in Versailles but Grégoire soon moved to a small factory in Asnières . After about 140 cars were made there came a change of engines with larger six-cylinder 2.7-litre units from Continental and 3- and 3.3-litre ones from Hotchkiss fitted in coupé and saloon-bodied road cars. Notable models had
192-652: A side-valve engine although the latter was still common at this time. An overhead valve version came later. During the Second World War he secretly worked with his design team at his works at Asnières-sur-Seine on a small car the Aluminium "Francais-Grégoire". It had a chassis-body frame of light alloy, front-wheel drive, an air-cooled flat twin engine and independent suspension on all wheels. A four-seat car weighing only 880 pounds (400 kg) and could reach 60 mph (97 km/h) while returning 70 mpg . This design
240-549: A 2188 cc supercharged ohv boxer engine ahead of the front wheels. Only four cars were built. In mechanical terms the car was closely based on the car Grégoire had developed for Hotchkiss in the late 1940s, but it featured a stylish new two-door body, constructed by Chapron . It is not clear how seriously Grégoire contemplated selling the Sports Cabriolets exhibited in the 1950s, but they provided an impressive showcase for his engineering philosophy and talent. The car
288-570: A Le Mans, with an overall 8th and 9th finishing position. The company failed to make money from car manufacture and production stopped in 1934. Grégoire kept the factory at Asnières and used it for his own design and engineering work. He would use it for the chassis and engine of his "Sports Cabriolet" in the mid 1950s, following his acrimonious break with Hotchkiss over the technically adventurous but commercially disastrous Hotchkiss Grégoire . In 1955 Grégoire introduced an intriguing Sports Cabriolet prototype, with body by Chapron , front-drive and
336-414: A capacity of 1,000 cc. The capacity was increased and the final V6 in 1966 had a capacity of 1,300 cc, which developed 83 hp (62 kW) at 5,000 rpm using the standard configuration with two carburettors . A four-carburettor version produced 100 hp (75 kW), a six-carburettor one 130 hp (97 kW). It weighed only 84 kg (185 lb). The V6 was planned to be used in
384-556: A choice between 18 or 20 hp (15 kW). These models had a generator that doubled as a starter, mounted directly on the crankshaft , known as a Dynastart . DKW in Zwickau produced approximately 218,000 units between 1931 and 1942. Most of those cars were sold on the home market and over 85% of DKWs produced in the 1930s were the little F series cars: DKW reached second place in German sales by 1934 and stayed there, accounting for 189,369 of
432-501: A commercial success. In 1937 he designed the Amilcar Compound , produced by Hotchkiss from 1938 to the Second World War, by which time 681 examples had been made. It was constructed using another of Grégoire's ideas, a cast Alpax [ fr ] (light alloy) chassis frame. Other advanced features were rack and pinion steering and all independent suspension. But the car had its bad points, cable brakes and gear-change linkage and
480-639: A minority holder in Vemag, and in 1967 Volkswagen bought the remainder of the stock. VW quickly began phasing out DKW-Vemag production and introduced the Volkswagen 1600 sedan to the old Vemag plant, after a total of 109,343 DKW-Vemag cars had been built. DKW vehicles were made in Argentina from 1960 to 1969 by IASF S.A. (Industria Automotriz Santa Fe Sociedad Anónima) in Sauce Viejo , Santa Fe . The most beautiful were
528-426: A two-seat convertible with a 2.2-litre supercharged flat-four engine producing 130 PS (96 kW; 128 hp) and, as in the case of the cars mentioned previously, front-wheel drive. All ten cars made were fitted with bodies designed and built by Henri Chapron . All the cars mentioned previously were front-wheel-drive cars. Grégoire also designed a couple of rear-wheel-drive machines: the first electric car with
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#1732855097603576-595: A utility vehicle and a four-door sedan, called Vemaguet and Belcar respectively. The first model built was the 900 cc F91 Universal but the Belcar and Vemaguet names were applied later. In 1958, the F94 four-door sedan and station wagon were launched, in the early 1960s renamed Belcar and Vemaguet. The company also produced a luxury coupe (the DKW Fissore) and the off-road Munga (locally called Candango). In 1960 Vemag cars received
624-465: A wholly-owned subsidiary of Audi AG which also owns the rights to other historical trademarks and intellectual property of the Auto Union combine. DKW cars were made from 1928 until 1966, apart from the interruption caused by the Second World War. DKWs always used two-stroke engines, reflecting the company's position by the end of the 1920s as the world's largest producer of motorcycles. The first DKW car,
672-699: Is generally described as the Grégoire Sports Cabriolet. Nevertheless, Grégoire had retained rights to the Tracta name. Two of the Sports Cabriolets produced turned up in October 1956 at the 43rd Paris Motor Show : one was exhibited on the Henri Chapron stand and the other on a small stand against the wall, positioned next to that of the British AC company, and the identified by the name "Grégoire (Tracta)". The car
720-552: Is really just a few specific years, but generally people call the Harley lightweights Hummers), while BSA used them for the Bantam . IFA and later MZ models continued in production until the 1990s, when economics brought production of the two stroke to an end. Other manufacturers copied the DKW design, officially or otherwise. This can be seen in the similarity of many small two-stroke motorcycles from
768-581: The DKW Munga and the F102. About 100 engines were built for testing purposes and 13 DKW F102 and some Mungas were fitted with the V6 engine in the 1960s. The last DKW was the F102, coming into production in 1964 as a replacement for the old-looking AU1000. However, the F102 sold poorly, largely due to its two-stroke engine technology which was at the limit of its development. Auto Union's parent, Daimler-Benz, decided to offload
816-631: The 3=6 or F91. Saab used DKW engines as a model for the Saab two-stroke in their first production car, the Saab 92 . As Auto Union was based in Saxony in what became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), it took some time for it to regroup after the war. The company was registered in West Germany as Auto Union GmbH in 1949, first as a spare-part provider, but soon to take up production of
864-641: The Cupé Fissore, which had many famous owners (Julio Sosa, César Luis Menotti, and others). Other models are the Auto Union 1000 S Sedán (21,797 made until 1969) and the Auto Union 1000 Universal S (6,396 made until 1969). and the Auto Union Combi/Pick-up . The last version of the Auto Union Combi/Pick-up ( DKW F1000 L ), launched in 1969, survived a few months and was bought out by IME , which continued production until 1979. The DKW Munga
912-561: The DKW plant moved the import of SKD kits stopped, as it became too expensive. From 1956 to 1967, DKW cars were made in Brazil by the local company Vemag ( Veículos e Máquinas Agrícolas S.A. , "Vehicles and Agricultural Machinery Inc."). Vemag was assembling Scania-Vabis trucks, but Scania Vabis became an independent company in July 1960. The original plans were to build the Candango off-roader (Munga),
960-458: The F91. The F91 was in production 1953–1955, and was replaced by the larger F93 in 1956. The F91 and F93 had 900 cc three-cylinder two-stroke engines, the first ones delivering 34 hp (25 kW), the last 38 hp (28 kW). The ignition system comprised three independent sets of points and coils , one for each cylinder, with the points mounted in a cluster around a single lobed cam at
1008-739: The ISDT The motorcycle branch produced famous models such as the RT 125 pre- and post- World War II , and after the war with production at the original factory in GDR becoming MZ it made 175, 250 and 350 (cc) models. As war reparations, the design drawings of the RT125 were given to Harley-Davidson in the US and BSA in the UK. The Harley-Davidson version was known loosely as the Hummer (Hummer
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#17328550976031056-589: The RT 125 motorcycle and a new delivery van , called a Schnellaster F800. Their first line of production took place in Düsseldorf . This van used the same engine as the last F8 made before the war. Their first car was the F89 using the body from the prototype F9 made before the war and the two-cylinder two-stroke engine from the last F8. Production went on until it was replaced by the successful three-cylinder engine that came with
1104-582: The cars designed by J A Grégoire that will be mentioned later. The Tracta joint was fitted to most of the military vehicles that had driven front wheels used by most of the combatants in the Second World War . They included Laffly and Panhard in France, Alvis and Daimler in the UK and Willys in the United States that used the joint in a quarter of a million Jeeps and many others. This was to continue after
1152-445: The cars sold between 1931 and 1938, more than 16% of the market. Between 1929 and 1940, DKW produced a less well remembered but technically intriguing series of rear-wheel drive cars called (among other names) Schwebeklasse and Sonderklasse with two-stroke V4 engines. Engine displacement was 1,000 cc, later 1,100 cc. The engines had two extra cylinders that acted as air compressors for forced induction , so they had
1200-603: The company to Volkswagen. The car was re-engineered with a four-stroke engine and relaunched as the Audi F103. This marked the end of the DKW marque for cars, and the rebirth of the Audi name. From 1956 to 1961, Dutch importer Hart, Nibbrig & Greve assembled cars in an abandoned asphalt factory in Sassenheim , where they employed about 120 workers, two transporter, that collected SKD kits from Duesseldorf and built about 13.500 cars. When
1248-541: The dominant racing motorcycle in the Lightweight and Junior classes between the wars. This included off-road events like the International Six Days Trial where the marque scored some considerable inter-war year successes alongside Bavarian Motor Works At the same time, the company also had some success with super-charged racing motorcycles which because of their light weight were particularly successful in
1296-621: The external appearance of a V6 engine but without spark plugs on the front cylinder pair. In 1939, DKW made a prototype with the first three-cylinder engine , with a displacement of 900 cc and producing 30 hp (22 kW). With a streamlined body, the car could run at 115 km/h (71 mph). It was put into production after World War II , first as an Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau (IFA) F9 (later Wartburg ) in Zwickau , East Germany , and shortly afterwards in DKW-form from Düsseldorf as
1344-506: The field. Tracta returned to Le Mans in 1929 , now with four cars, three Type As using supercharged 4-cylinder four-stroke engines and a fourth one, a Spéciale, with experimental two-stroke engine designed by the engineer Cozette (who at the time was better known as a designer of superchargers). Only two of the Tractas competing in 1929 completed the race, the two-stroke experimental car retiring after 43 laps. By 1930 only two Type As appeared
1392-915: The first years only as a coupé and from 1962 also as a convertible . In 1956, the very rare DKW Monza was put into small-scale production on a private initiative, with a sporting two-seater body of glassfiber on a standard F93 frame. It was first called Solitude, but got its final name from the long-distance speed records it made on the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy in December 1956. Running in Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) class G, it set records including 48 hours at an average speed of 140.961 km/h (87.589 mph), 10,000 km at 139.453 km/h (86.652 mph) and 72 hours at 139.459 km/h (86.656 mph). The car
1440-415: The following names: Tracta appeared at 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time in 1927 . It brought two Type A Gephi. Car number 19 did not start due to an accident on the way to the circuit and number 20 finished 7th. Three cars competed in the 1928 Le Mans 24 Hour race , two Type As, including one driven by Grégoire (in partnership with) himself, and one Type A Gephi. All three finished, albeit well down
1488-495: The front end of the crankshaft. The cooling system was of the free convection type assisted by a fan driven from a pulley mounted at the front end of the crankshaft. The F93 was produced until 1959, and was replaced by the Auto-Union 1000. These models were produced with a 1,000 cc two-stroke engine, with a choice between 44 hp (33 kW) or 50 hp (37 kW) S versions until 1963. During this transition, production
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1536-612: The larger one-litre, 50 PS (37 kW) engine from the Auto Union 1000 . Vemag had a successful official racing team, with the coupe GT Malzoni, with fiberglass body. This project was the foundation of the long-lasting Brazilian sports car brand Puma . The Brazilian F94 line has been improved with several cosmetic changes and became more and more different from the German and Argentine models. Vemag had no capital to invest in new products and came under governmental pressure to merge. In 1964–1965 Volkswagen gradually took over Auto Union ,
1584-434: The machinery in the mid-engine position and a gas turbine car, the experimental SOCEMA-Grégoire with a front-engined, rear-wheel drive layout. DKW DKW ( Dampf-Kraft-Wagen , English: "steam-powered car" ; the same initials later also used for Deutsche Kinder-Wagen , English: "German children's car" ; Das Kleine Wunder , English: "the little wonder" ; and Des Knaben Wunsch English: "the boy's wish" )
1632-530: The majority owner in Audi Werke AG . Models F1 to F8 (F for Front) were built between 1931 and 1942, with successor models reappearing after the end of the war in 1945. They were the first volume production cars in Europe with front wheel drive , and were powered by transversely mounted two-cylinder two-stroke engines. Displacement was 584 or 692 cc: claimed maximum power was initially 15 PS, and from 1931
1680-417: The small and rather crude Typ P , emerged on 7 May 1928 and the model continued to be built at the company's Spandau (Berlin) plant, first as a roadster and later as a stylish if basic sports car, until 1931. More significant was a series of inexpensive cars built 300 km (185 miles) to the south in Zwickau in the plant acquired by the company's owner Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen in 1928 when he had become
1728-442: The war, the first Land Rover being so fitted. The second way he contributed to the development of front-wheel-drive vehicles was in designing and in some cases manufacturing front-wheel-drive cars. The Tracta Gephi was his first design and it was this car that inspired him to design a constant velocity joint. All subsequent Tracta cars, and there were about two hundred manufactured between 1927 and 1932, used it. The first of these
1776-456: Was a German car - and motorcycle - marque . DKW was one of the four companies that formed Auto Union in 1932 and thus became an ancestor of the modern-day Audi company. In 1916, Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen founded a factory in Zschopau , Saxony , Germany, to produce steam fittings. That year he attempted to produce a steam-driven car, which he called the DKW. That steam car
1824-549: Was built by Auto Union in Ingolstadt. Production began in October 1956 and ended in December 1968, with 46,750 cars built. From 1949 to 1962, DKW produced the Schnellaster with a trailing-arm rear suspension system with springs in the cross bar assembly. Spanish subsidiary IMOSA produced a modern successor introduced in 1963, the DKW F 1000 L. This van started with the three-cylinder 1,000 cc engine, but later received
1872-897: Was first produced by Dannenhauer & Strauss in Stuttgart , then by Massholder in Heidelberg and lastly by Robert Schenk in Stuttgart. The number produced is said to be around 75, 50 survived. Production finished by the end of 1958. A more successful range of cars was sold from 1959, the Junior/F12 series based on a modern concept from the late 1950s. The range consists of Junior (basic model) made from 1959 to 1961, Junior de Luxe (a little enhanced) from 1961 to 1963, F11 (a little larger) and F12 (larger and bigger engine) from 1963 to 1965, and F12 Roadster from 1964 to 1965. The Junior/F12 series became quite popular, and many cars were produced. An assembly plant
1920-483: Was in developing and promoting the Tracta joint (designed by his friend Pierre Fenaille ), which was, until manufacturing techniques had progressed sufficiently to allow the successful manufacture of the constant velocity joints commonly in use today, the preferred choice of most manufactures of vehicles that had driven front wheels. Tracta joints were used by many of the pioneers of front-wheel drive, including DKW between 1929 and 1936 and Adler from 1932 to 1939 as well as
1968-463: Was licensed in Ballincollig , County Cork , Ireland between 1952 and c.1964 and roughly 4,000 vehicles were assembled, ranging from saloons, vans and motorbikes to commercial combine harvesters . This was the only DKW factory outside Germany in Europe and for many years after its closure its large DKW sign could be visible on the wall of the factory. The building was demolished in the late 2000s and
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2016-481: Was listed by the manufacturer in 1956 at 3,500,000 francs, significantly more than the 2,869,000 francs quoted at the time for the much larger and more powerful Facel Vega FV . Jean-Albert Gr%C3%A9goire Jean-Albert Grégoire (7 July 1899 in Paris – 19 August 1992) was one of the great pioneers of the front-wheel-drive car. He contributed to the development of front-wheel-drive vehicles in two ways. The first way
2064-403: Was moved from Düsseldorf to Ingolstadt , where Audi still has its production. From 1957, the cars could be fitted with a saxomat , an automatic clutch, the only small car then offering this feature. The last versions of the Auto-Union 1000S had disc brakes as option, an early development for this technology. A sporting 2+2 seater version was available as the Auto-Union 1000 SP from 1957 to 1964,
2112-504: Was purchased by the Volkswagen Group in 1964. The last German-built DKW car was the F102 , which ceased production in 1966. Its successor, the four-stroke F103 , was marketed under the Audi brand, another Auto Union marque. DKW-badged cars continued to be built under license in Brazil and Argentina until 1967 and 1969 respectively. The DKW trademark is currently owned by Auto Union GmbH,
2160-571: Was raced at Le Mans in 1927 completing the 24-hour race. The Tracta cars used engines from S.C.A.P. from 1100 cc to 1600 cc, and Continental and Hotchkiss , from 2700 cc to 3300 cc. J.A. Grégoire designed an 11cv 6-cylinder car for Donnet in 1932. Only four prototypes were produced, one being shown at the Paris Salon of 1932 before Donnet went into liquidation. He then worked with Lucian Chenard to design two cars for Chenard et Walcker . They were of advanced design but were not
2208-482: Was redeveloped into a German Aldi store and a McDonald's drive-thru. All the three-cylinder two-stroke post-war cars had some sporting potential and formed the basis for many rally victories in the 1950s and early 1960s. This made DKW the most winning car brand in the European rally league for several years during the fifties. In 1960, DKW developed a V6 engine by combining two three-cylinder two-stroke engines, with
2256-508: Was to form the basis of the 1950 " Dyna " Panhard . In 1950 another Hotchkiss car the Hotchkiss Grégoire , was produced again with an alloy chassis and body. With independent suspension on all four wheels and fitted with a water-cooled flat four engine of 2 litres, ahead of the front axle, it was fast, with a top speed of 94 mph (151 km/h), but the car was expensive and only 250 examples were made by 1954. In 1956 Grégoire produced
2304-708: Was unsuccessful, and in 1919 he made toy two-stroke engines under the name Des Knaben Wunsch – "the boy's wish". He put a slightly modified version of the toy engine into a motorcycle and called it Das Kleine Wunder – "the little wonder", and by the late 1920s DKW had become the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer. In September 1924, DKW bought Slaby-Beringer , saving them from Germany's hyperinflation economic crisis . Rudolf Slaby became chief engineer at DKW. In 1932, DKW merged with Audi , Horch and Wanderer to form Auto Union. After World War II , DKW moved to West Germany . The original factory became MZ . Auto Union came under Daimler-Benz ownership in 1957 and
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