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

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

I thought I knew something about the history of the automotive industry until I started watching your videos. Thanks for the lesson in humility.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

fantastic video, so very interesting thank you

Most interesting - almost all new to me.

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. 🚗🙂

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.

Fascinating and very informative.

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.

Brilliant. Wieder was gelernt. Weiter so!

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)

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 ;-).

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

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.

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

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

Very interesting.

Quality 👏👏

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

glad your subscription count is up where it should be

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

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

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….

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

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.

Excellent! Do you plan a video about NSU?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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

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

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

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.

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.

Koenigsegg doesn't use an Audi drivetrain.

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

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.

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

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