Vintage Thing No.168 - Auto Union 1000

This splendid Belgian-registered example appeared at the 2022 Imp Club National at Borden in Hampshire.

It's a developed version of the DKW 3=6 and uses a 981cc (74 x 76mm) version of the 3-cylinder two- stroke engine (VT No.13) that's fascinated me for many years. 

In later years, DKW was held to stand for Das Kleine Wunder, or the little wonder but in 1916 it originally meant Dampf-Kraft-Wagen when Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen built a steam-powered car in Zschopau, Germany. When that venture failed, he made toy two-stroke engines for children under the name of Des Knaben Wunsch or "the boy's wish". Once fitted into bicycle frames, these became Das Kleine Wunder although some called the little Deeks the Deutsche Kinder-Wagen, or "German children's car". 

After a brief flirtation with rear-engined, two stroke-powered cars using a pumping cylinder for supercharge (I love that sort of thing), DKW introduced the three-cylinder two stroke engine ultimately used in front-wheel drive form by the Auto Union 1000.

I love the way the side windows wind down

The 3=6 name is wonderfully aspirational. It began as advertising copy (aske me about my copywriting career some other time) and makes the point that a two stroke has a power stroke twice a soften as a four stroke engine so a two-stroke triple is as smooth as a four-stroke six-cylinder engine. In terms of torque or shaft turning force, that may be a reasonable assertion but when it comes to power the two-stroke doesn't quite make that case. Some two-stroke detractors claim they run hotter and the DKW engine was watercooled, which helped quieten the engine.  

When the owners started up the Auto Union 1000, I was struck by how quiet it was. There is a crackle from the zorst but no mechanical din from the valve gear.  

A happy smiling steering wheel greets the driver

Auto Union remains a brand within the Volkswagen-Audi-Gruppe and is mostly associated with the sensational GP racers of the late 1930s. During the fifties there were concerns that earnest little two-strokes would only appeal to the East German market so the DKW automobiles were rebranded as Auto Union. Mercedes-Benz had a controlling interest in DKW at the time and were penetrating the North American market. If it worked for the VW Beetle then why not the little Deek? 

The pillarless hardtop styling of this Auto Union 1000 is very aspirational. It has a white steering wheel – like some contemporary Mercedes – and a column gearshift and I especially like the way the rear side windows wind down. 

Styling is somewhere between the USA and West Germany, a little more eastern that mid-Atlantic. Cornish perhaps?

Compared with its predecessors, the Auto Union 1000 had a wider track for the rear axle, an enlarged boot, front disc brakes and a patented Lubrimat oil supply system.  

The story goes that the idea for Lubrimat came to Technical Director Dr William Werner and chief designer Oskar Siebler, whilst drinking coffee in the Alpine Franzenshöhe café located at hairpin 22 on the Stelvio Pass. Using a separate oil tank instead of the traditional petroil mix, this system fed oil in the ideal ratio of 1 part to 40 of fuel via a pump to a feed pipe in the carburettor. However, the first winter after Auto Union 1000’s introduction, in 1962-3, was a hard one and the oil thickened too much, causing engine bearing failure.

Americans never took the two-stroke triple to their hearts in the same way as they did the four-stroke Beetle. Even producing a sports car like a baby Ford Thunderbird didn’t endear DKW or the Audi to the good ole US of stateside. Two-cycle engines were okay in dirt bikes but compared poorly to the V8s real T-birds packed.

The days of the two-stroke were numbered. Curiously, the successor to the Auto Union 1000 was branded the DKW F102 of 1964. This had sleek lines anticipating later Audi styling and although initially powered by an 1175cc two-stroke engine with four speeds instead of three, modern four stroke Audi engines soon replaced the three-cylinder two-stroke engine - a powerplant that still retained with only seven moving parts to the very end - and the car was rebadged as an Audi under Volkswagen ownership.

With an ignition coil for each cylinder, the Auto Union 1000 anticipated modern cars or had a degree of built in redundancy in case of failure, just like a light aircraft

In six years, Auto Union made 171,008 cars, mostly at the Düsseldorf plant (in the old Rheinmetall - Borsig factory) but the design lived on in Argentina and Brazil.

Maximum power varied between 33 and 37kW although the F102 boasted 51kW and many of these engines were super-tuned for racing, especially behind the Iron Curtain as they were often all that was available for competition.

It strikes me that the corporate musical chairs and rebranding of DKW/Auto Union?Audi was handled much better than the shenanigans British Leyland were up to around this time.

The engines had a reputation for rev-happy unburstability. There were some V6 prototypes built before the company threw in the towel and adopted four-stroke engines and these six pot motors (6=12?) intrigue me hugely

For their day, these little cars accelerated well and had a reputation for very sure-footed handling. Motoring journalist Bill Boddy wrote in a road test that, “It took us a while to learn to keep our foot flat on the floor when cornering at speeds so high that a more conventional car would swap ends,” adding “One has the impression that a driver can pound the car without mercy, flog it for all its worth and it will come back for more.”