DKW F9 - Part 2 - How it influences German car industry until today

[@sv3nnn]

I know these Videos don’t get as much views as some others but please keep them coming, cause they’re really interesting and I love them

[@bsport320]

Thanks! Will do!

[@thegoldencaulk2742]

Seeing a car's lineage laid out like this is so useful for understanding how the industry became as it is, thanks for this vid!

[@paulds65]

Fantastic video! I was very familiar with the audi longitudinal concept having owned a bunch of A4s (all quattro of course) and having worked on many A6s . Never knew the layout went back to the DKW F9. My dad had a DKW 125 cc motorcycle. Current car is a Porsche 997.2 so still basically a VW type 1 ;-).

[@gershonpollatschek6048]

Brilliant. Wieder was gelernt. Weiter so!

[@bsport320]

Gerne!

[@anvilsvs]

You've overlooked NSU. The Golf was an NSU design. The power train was the NSU transverse layout moved to the front. Some of the body details such as the door panel design had previously been seen only in NSUs. I saw my first Golf in Chicago in early 1975 and immediately recognized some of the design features I remembered from the NSU I had in Germany in 1967.

[@paulsehstedt6275]

The Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen (1878-1964) established DKW in 1916. DKW is the short form for Dampf Kraft Wagen; Steam Powered Wagon. Great videos.

[@bsport320]

Yes exactly, or "Des Knaben Wunsch", or "Das Kleine Wunder" etc. More on Rasmussen and his study in future videos!

[@Isayso1]

Rasmussen even manufactured refrigerators, labeled as "Das Kühl Wunder".

[@X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X]

What a brilliant insight into the history of the automotive industry, and a car that I, even as a German, never gave a second look.

[@bsport320]

To be fair, it wasn't built for that long but influenced the industry much more than most people think.

[@X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X]

@@bsport320 I knew about the Meister- and Sonderklasse, but failed to see the bigger picture. Thank you for videos like this.

[@Alpostpone]

The graph describing technical evolution takes a complex topic and presents it with impressive clarity. Much appreciated.

[@bsport320]

Thank you very much!

[@estebanrearte252]

Such a comprehensive video with technical facts, great ! Anyhow these cars aren't forgotten at all . Perhaps we in Argentina (Argentinien) are a bit eccentric since this country assembled these 1000s ( 3=6 in USA, Vemag in Brazil ) plus the wagon called DKW Universal , even the utillity van , at domestic facilities plant in SantaFe , Argentina until year 1970. Proven to be so popular in this country , for every VW Kafer you got 20 DKW Autounion 1000s at Buenos Aires' streets. There's still a big actively DKW's owners club in Argentina, everything and all parades are documented in you tube

[@bsport320]

Thanks for sharing!

[@theowaigel8588]

You mentioned the Munga, a two-stroke driven jeep type of car used by the West German army in the 50s und 60s. In the first part of this video you said the German Army rejected the two-stroke concept in the early 30s due to the noise and the visibility of the exhaust fumes. I served in the Bundeswehr in the early 80s and believe it or not one of the than ancient Mungas was still in service and boy was it visible because of smoke and steam blown in the air. The Iltis was rarely seen at the time in service more often you saw the VW W181 a car which was based on the beetle, so rear engine and rwd but due to this concept it was fairly amazing off road for such a simple car

[@bsport320]

Thanks for sharing!

[@tryagain.k1821]

Off road capability was due to the trailing arm axles.

[@jusuftheeagle6772]

fantastic video, so very interesting thank you

[@parallax_review]

Super interesting! Don't hesitate to make further videos on car concepts and the car industry!

[@bsport320]

Thanks! Will do!

[@unclemarksdiyauto]

Some great history on these cars. It helped me see how little i really know about vw and Audi. DKW, I know nothing about! A beautiful little car though.

[@bsport320]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@Schlipperschlopper]

One of the most modern cars of its time! It would be interesting to mount an air cooled Tatra V4 or beetle boxer engine in the front of the DKW to replace the two stroke engine.

[@chride1]

it would probably not be considered the be worth the work and the money...however...dkw built a 4wd vehicle called munga or candango in argentina..these cars were highly appreciated all over and equipped with engines from ford ( v4 ) opel 1.2 4 cylinder and even some beetle engines...that done through wide choice of conversion kits

[@YangD-082]

Off topic but it's unbelievable that the rear engine design of the Beetle survive this long and become the most important part of the most iconic sports car.

[@timhancock6626]

Its sometimes hard to remember the massive leap in build quality that the VW represented. When Borgward went bust my father traded his Isabella for a VW Beetle. Dynamically the car was a mess, but the way the doors closed and the total absence of rattles and squeaks when the car drove over bumps was a revelation in quality engineering, and the paint finish was very good too. I had brief experience of the DKW in the UK and it too was quite well made, but not as well as the VW though with front wheel drive it was better dynamically in handling. By the early 60s the two stroke engine, although charming and interesting and better than you might think, was already something of an anachronism however.

[@AnttiBrax]

On the contrary that was very on topic. 😀 Everyone knows about Porsche thanks to the Three Stooges but the DKW part of the lineage was new at least to me.

[@jamesjacocks6221]

Another viewpoint holds that Porsche 911 is an anachronism with really quite poor handling ("the doctor killer"). The market outside of Germany respects Porsche because part of the product is its price and part of the product is its foreign design. I will admit that the machine work and detailing are of a high standard but the design has been obsolescent since the Seventies. Stylistically, the rear engined coupe is interesting but only so to forgiving eyes. Iconic, aside from being an overworked term, means virtually nothing when applied to cars.

[@patosentado9665]

More videos like this one please!!! In Spain the DKW vans were so popular at a time that older pleople used the term DKW for any van.

[@bsport320]

Thanks for sharing this info!

[@Xayuap]

¿cómo la pronunciaban?

[@arthurspader5423]

Thank you for making these videos. DKW history is indeed really important for the automobile history, because their design and engineering were ahead of their time. They beated the beetle, the trabant and even porsches. Here in Brazil DKW-Vemag sold lots of cars, all were successful and were far better than the beetle. But the environmental cause was the last nail in 2 stroke engines. Sadly, most of them cars landed in scrapyards and the community that collects DKWs is much smaller than air cooled collectors. Congrats for the content, you gained another subscriber today

[@bsport320]

Thanks for the info and subscribing!

[@trance9158]

Fascinating and very informative.

[@bsport320]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@danvandal4127]

Danke sehr fuer die Videos, big up! My father had a later model Wartburg and it's great to find out its 3 cylinder history is related to the DKW F9.

[@johnclayden1670]

Most interesting - almost all new to me.

[@jeffking4176]

Interesting. I have actually seen 2 DKWs. One was essentially the same as here, but had a much more modern grill, and the other was the “shrunken Thunderbird “ looking coupe. Someone in my neighborhood had them, where I grew up in St.Louis Missouri USA. Great videos. 🚗🙂

[@bsport320]

Thanks! Yes very nice cars. The small Thunderbird is the DKW 1000 SP

[@doctoremil2678]

Fun fact: Alfa Romeo, Renault and Dacia also used DKW's packaging concept for a while. Alfa used it for the Alfasud, 33 and their derivatives, Renault for 12, 20, 30, 18, Fuego, 25 and 21, and Dacia for all of their cars based on the 12. AR 33, Renault 21 and Dacia pick up trucks also had all wheel drive in some versions, and made great use of it. Alfa Romeo 33 QV and Renault 21 Turbo Quadra in particular were absolute beasts!

[@AR_434]

I love your video! Great topics, simplistic in design and so information dense!

[@bsport320]

Glad you liked it!

[@timhancock6626]

I remember watching DKWs racing in the British Saloon Car championship in the early 1960s ( and incidentally a Borgward Isabella TS in the 1500cc class)

[@masiosareanivdelarev562]

Very interesting.

[@gafrers]

Quality 👏👏

[@bsport320]

Thanks!

[@ambergris5705]

Thanks, now that my mind is blown, I need to pick up the pieces.

[@peterhelm6003]

In my youth I owned a DKW Hobby motorscooter. It was a very basic design with a simple 50cc two stroke engine and variable speed pulley drive. It was not fast, but could readily transport up to four hungry university students to a late night feed at "Greazy Loui's" hamburger shop - and back again. Its only failing was that I could not find a replacement V belt of the correct size for the variable speed drive. So when the original belt shredded it was all over for a useful mode of student transport. Some quick online research suggests that it was probably built in Ingolstadt (West Germany) some time from 1954.

[@sunbeam8866]

Having owned two early-70s Audi Super-90 wagons, and a sedan, plus a 57 DKW Sonderklasse coupe and '64 F-12 roadster, I was aware of their convoluted history. The postwar Audis had some unusual engineering, featuring 4-wheel torsion-bar suspension and inboard front disc-brakes. The slant-four high-compression OHV engine was designed by Daimler-Benz, but never made in into any Mercedes production-car.

[@marcelogazzoli4279]

That DKW was a great hit in Brazil in the early days of local automotive industry. And also almost unbeatable in race courses. If you find one ind good condition (original, non restaured), collectors are ready to pay astronimic amount of money to have it.

[@Isayso1]

The placement of the radiator behind the engine is not so much to reduce the front overhang, but more due to the thermosyphon system which can operate without any pump and the fluid is circulating by difference in temperature only. To achieve this, the radiator must be placed higher than the engine. And this position of the radiator is practical too, because it can be attached to the mount of the front leaf spring.

[@bsport320]

Yes, very true. But if this radiator would be positioned in front of the engine in this high position, we would have a longer overhang and a very high boxy nose like the F8. So also for aerodynamic reasons the radiator behind is a good packaging solution.

[@Isayso1]

@@bsport320 For sure. I didn't mention this because it is too obvious that there would be no sight to the road ahead at all with the radiator in front and above the engine. They might have put it to the side as in the Schnellaster but there was not enough room under the hood.

[@HannyDart]

ha! been waiting eversince i randomly saw the car in real life after the last video :O

[@seriksson9721]

Hi. It is also interesting to see the NSU car in the VW K70. The lines reveal a lot.

[@rr6013]

Owned a 4dr 3cyl 4spd on the column F-9 in appearance DKW but wasn’t noted in video. Loved that car. Now understnd why it was so unique. It had none of VW’s flaws

[@indopleaser]

glad your subscription count is up where it should be

[@TheUlrikkaul]

Where dos NSU fit in? I would say that NSU (K70) also had a influence in the front wheel drive of VW.

[@bsport320]

Design-wise yes but technically the first VW Passat was a rebranded Audi 80 B1. The NSU K70 had the engine further back and the diff underneath.

[@hagerty1952]

I know it's not German, but you could add how much influence DKW had on the Swedish car industry, specifically Saab. The very first Saab (model 92) used the DKW 2-cylinder 2-stroke powertrain and even kept the radiator behind the engine. This let the designers in Sweden duct all the head the tiny engine produced directly into the cabin to fight off the cold Nordic winter! Saab kept variations of this layout up until they were purchased by GM, who moved the company to an Opel platform, and basically killed them.

[@bsport320]

I wanted to concentrate on German car industry with this video because otherwise this would be endless. There is so much DKW influence in car industry. But Saab is definitely enough content for a separate video.

[@hagerty1952]

@@bsport320 - Looking forward to it!

[@coffeeisgood102]

I’m wondering if Jay Leno has a DKW in his collection. If he does I would love to see it on his show.

[@htimsid]

Excellent! Do you plan a video about NSU?

[@bsport320]

There will be something coming

[@iningizimu]

Very interesting indeed. But where does NSU fit in? Surely the NSU influenced the VW Golf design and development?

[@lawrencelewis2592]

Another excellent video- But, I thought the K70 was the first water-cooled Volkswagen. I saw several of those at the Technoclassica Essen show about 12 years ago.Also, the Canadian army used the Iltis. I have owned a 1956 and a 1962 Volkswagen and about 35 years ago I helped restore a 1960 Porsche 356. I found out that aside from the rear engine/gearbox configuration, they really are quite different.

[@mikaeljakobsson8288]

The K70 was a rebadged NSU. Another company in trouble that VW took over

[@bsport320]

I focused on the DKW F9 concept in this video. The K70 was a NSU design with the engine further back and the differential underneath the engine.

[@lawrencelewis2592]

@@bsport320 I did not know that about the K70, thank you. I would like to see more about the pre-war cars. The F7 is very appealling to me.

[@bennyhannover9361]

VW bought the NSU group in 1969 when it was in trouble and Renault was interested to overtake it. At that time there was only 26 prototypes of K70 existent but no production line for it. So VW built a new factory at Salzgitter for it. Audi had in 1969 already several versions of the F103 since 1965 in production ( 72/ 60/ 80/Super 90) and also the 100 since 1968 (80/90/100hp) so it was an only fwd producer of more than 100 k per year.

[@lawrencelewis2592]

@@bennyhannover9361 Wasn't NSU part of Auto Union? Didn't VW buy them and all their brands?

[@DickyBobby]

Just working on a 2004 A4 today & was wondering just why when it’s 4cl T and FWD the transition is still facing that direction lol.

[@maritagraefer6027]

Saab was very inspired by DKWs F9 with its two and later three-cylinder driven models 92,93,95 and 96.

[@bsport320]

Very true, there are many more cars you could name but I just pointed out the most significant ones.

[@bennyhannover9361]

It seems to be proven that Saab used the DKW layout twostroke engine plus Front-wheeldrive as basis for the Saab 92.Why ? Because Sweden was the biggest foreign export market of Auto Union between 25 and 40 percent of the Horch or DKW cars were delivered to Scandinavia. In the small car segment nearly every third car was a DKW and many workshops knew how to service them. This experience brought the airplane company Saab to this conclusion. A further inspiration was also the Hanomag 1.3 liter produced between 1938 and 1941. Here they could research the structure of a similar coach construction.

[@mrspandel5737]

Funnily enough they adopted a different longitudinal FWD concept from the Triumph 1300, with its engine mounted back to front on top of the transmission, for the 99 and 900

[@CaSuMog]

Oh look at Citroen again when it comes to transporters, the HY van from around 1949 - front engine layout again, which could be detached by just 4 bolts and of course total freedom behind the cabin so about a million different setups were made, from breadvans to animal transporters….

[@tryagain.k1821]

Beetle engines were held in by 4 bolts. You could drop an engine in 4 minutes.

[@tryagain.k1821]

@@gaborcsuzdi7006 By unstable handling you mean lift of oversteer. Due to the swing axels not engine position. W hich occurred on front and rear drive cars ie Triumph Herald & Beetle

[@feedingravens]

Somehow I miss the NSU Ro 80 in your story. The 5-cylinder Audi 100 would not have looked like it dit without the Ro 80. Anyhow. Audi is only the follow up name of the Auto Union of 1932, when the 4 companies (symboliuzed by the 4 rings) Horch, Audi (founded by August Horch when he left his own company (audi!=horch! in latin)), Wanderer and DKW merged. My father (after the DKW 3=6 I mentioned in part 1 of this video and a Ford), owned an Audi 100 of the F102 generation (the GL with the 112 hp engine that then went into the Golf GTI where it made history), then 3 Audi 100 GL 5E. The last generation was the first with catalysator, somewhat castrated, it did not have the "bite" of the original.

[@bsport320]

In this video we concentrated on the DKW F9 concept and how it progressed after the war. The NSU Ro80 was a different technical concept but its designer Claus Luthe was working for AUDI after both companies merged in 1969. He was then designing the AUDI 80 B2 and AUDI 100 C2. I talk about this in my latest video about rear door design where the Ro80 plays an important role.

[@thomasalbrecht5914]

Your chart with the further evolution of the two concepts is a labour of love, but it simply leaves out too many circumstances. To sum up the postwar career of the beetle simply by saying that “VW ran into massive problem in the 1970s” is ridiculous. The rear engine concept for a family car certainly wasn’t a good idea from the start, but it wasn’t the F9 that showed it up. The superiority of FWD cars was long established by the time VW finally turned towards them, by the successive adoption of that concept by more and more mass produced cars. The only difficulty that had to be overcome was the cost of the mass production of reliable and durable CV joints for the front axle driveshafts. DKW was of course a pioneer of front wheel drive in the interwar years, but in terms of numbers produced and market share, non German brands have done much more for the success of the concept, see especially Citroën and Renault, and arguably, the blueprint for the Golf and Polo that ultimately saved VW from the cul-de-sac of rear engined models were the FWD Renault hatchbacks of the 1960s and 1970s, especially the Renault 5, not the DKWs which had no hatchback and were outsold even by the rather unconvincing Ford FWDs of the 1960s. The main reason for the beetle’s success was never the technical layout, it was that it had a massive factory with state backing behind it, as you mention yourself, and could be churned out in enormous quantities at a reasonable price, and dominate its domestic market to the tune of market shares unheard of in truly free markets. But it was the capital backing of the very same company that eventually brought the Western remains of Auto Union back to life, with a bit of technical support from Daimler-Benz. The reason however was competition from other European brands, which made much better cars than the Beetle and had easier access to the German market due to the foundation of the European Economic Community. It is quite natural that companies will rarely change their product completely, but when they eventually do, there’s a lot of market pressure at work, and that’s sadly completely absent from your analysis.

[@ropi4524]

All the overhang discussions are a no issue in present and future with electric cars.

[@bsport320]

In theory yes, because there is no ICE engine in that position anymore but I can tell you that engineers still think in the same package and that’s the reason why current etrons have the same overhang as before😅

[@obsoleszenzneindanke8562]

Falsches Bild in2:00 min. Gezeigt wird ein Prototyp des F9 Roadster, der wurde nie gebaut, ich kenne genau dieses sehr schöne Auto Einzelstück😊

[@bsport320]

Ich weiss dass dieses Bild den Roadster zeigt. Ich wollte damit nur zeigen in welche Richtung im Osten entwickelt wurde.

[@seriksson9721]

DKW's 2-stroke engines were probably better than SAAB's, bigger volume and more power. Probably think that SAAB copied in the beginning.

[@coffeeisgood102]

The Barkas B1000 is so ugly it’s pretty. I would buy one in a heartbeat if I could. (Of course, I only drive electric nowadays so I would rip the engine, muffler, etc and install batteries and electric motor)

[@avada0]

I wonder how something like this would look like for the American market. Build a bigger tub, put a bigger engine in it. Done.

[@egrono1]

And the German car industry still hasn't made a dependable vehicle since the original Beetle. Note: Maybe they should dissect a Toyota Corolla and take some notes.

[@garyfrancis6193]

Many views. “ Views” are countable. Much is the indeterminate quantitative determiner for uncountables.

[@nlpnt]

Toyota largely copied the DKW/Audi layout for their first FWD car, the 1979 Corolla Tercel, even adapting it to 4wd in its' second generation.

[@jamesengland7461]

Koenigsegg doesn't use an Audi drivetrain.

[@bsport320]

They started with an Audi Drivetrain

[@jamesengland7461]

@@bsport320 Ford modular V8

[@jourwalis-8875]

"The Porsche still stick to the old VW concept". Terrible!

[@Swiss4.2]

Whats so terrible about that?

[@GereDJ2]

Like the info in both these vids. However, narrator needs better acoustic enclosure and better mic. He also needs to speak and not read the info as his accent does indeed get in the way of clearly understandable English. His delivery is sing-songy and momotonish, lacking enough interest and personality. I realize he is amateur, but the effort he put into the info and vid work deserve better vocal elocution.

[@esajuhanirintamaki965]

Bitte, nie wieder Englisch-Plapperei! Sonst sehr hochinteressante Geschichte!

[@ninonucaro8539]

SPITZ, GUTES VIDEO, 1 UND 2. LEIDER 15 JAHRE ZU FRUEH.