Qualla: DKW

DKW: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ch vik, CC BY-SA 3.0. The initials meant three different things before the company settled down. Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen, a Danish engineer who set up a factory at Zschopau in Saxony in 1916 to make steam fittings, tried that same year to build a steam-driven car and called it the DKW — Dampfkraftwagen. The steam car was a failure. In 1919 he reused the initials for a small two-stroke engine sold as a toy: Des Knaben Wunsch, the boy's wish. Then he put a slightly modified version of that toy engine into a motorcycle frame and had to name it a third time. Das Kleine Wunder — the little wonder. That one stuck, and the little wonder went on to become one of the most widely copied engine designs in the history of the motorcycle.

Read more: DKW on Qualla

Image: Ch vik | CC BY-SA 3.0

DKW: Sixty Thousand Machines a Year

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Motacilla, CC BY-SA 4.0. Zschopau sits in a river valley about 14 kilometres southeast of Chemnitz, at 350 metres, under the twelfth-century Schloss Wildeck. It is not a large place. Motorcycles have been built there since 1922, the world's first motorcycle assembly line ran there from 1926, and by 1928 ...

Read more: DKW on Qualla

Image: Motacilla | CC BY-SA 4.0

DKW: Four Rings

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brücke-Osteuropa, CC0. In 1932 DKW merged with Audi, Horch and Wanderer to form Auto Union, and the four interlocked rings on every Audi built since stand for those four companies. Rasmussen had already become majority owner of Audi Werke AG in 1928, acquiring a plant at Zwickau, and it was there that ...

Read more: DKW on Qualla

Image: Brücke-Osteuropa | CC0

DKW: The Design That Got Away

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Quelle: Rikita / Freisteller, Bildbearbeitung & Retusche von Auge=mit, CC BY-SA 4.0. The RT 125, a 125 cc two-stroke built at Zschopau in the 1930s, used loop scavenging and a transfer-port layout that made a small engine unusually efficient. After the Second World War the factory fell inside the Soviet zone and the drawings were taken as reparations — and then t...

Read more: DKW on Qualla

Image: Quelle: Rikita / Freisteller, Bildbearbeitung & Retusche von Auge=mit | CC BY-SA 4.0

DKW: One Marque, Two Germanys

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Přispívatel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Auto Union's factories were in Saxony, which became East Germany, and the company had to rebuild itself from nothing in the West. It re-registered as Auto Union GmbH in 1949, first selling spare parts, then producing the RT 125 and the Schnellaster delivery van from Düsseldorf. A...

Read more: DKW on Qualla

Image: Přispívatel | CC BY-SA 4.0

DKW: Last of the Two-Strokes

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Helmut Kraus (Benutzer Hamkraus), CC BY 3.0. The postwar DKWs were modest cars with unexpected sporting reserves. The F91 gave way to the F93 in 1956 and then to the Auto Union 1000, whose 1,000 cc three-cylinder two-stroke made 44 or 50 hp; from 1957 buyers could specify the saxomat automatic clutch, unavailable on any oth...

Read more: DKW on Qualla

Image: Helmut Kraus (Benutzer Hamkraus) | CC BY 3.0