Doorne’s Aanhangwagen Fabriek, the cars no-one seems to remember

The Beginning

The brothers van Doorne started as a repair and construction work, which went quite well until 1929 and the stock market crash. Unluckily they just bought an expansion for their company and because of the huge costs of this and the decreasing amount of orders, they had to think of something new. And so they started producing trailers and semi-trailers.

But now, let's skip to 1943, Second World War was busy doing stuff but one of the brothers still played with the idea of producing cars in stead of trailers. So he designed a small car for mass production. The car really deserved the word "small" since it was just 75cm wide and had a 0,125L 1 cylinder engine with a top speed of 65 kph. The idea was to produce at least 1000 of these after the war. Eventually they got rid of the idea and the car (with as nickname "driving raincoat") went to a circus. After which it ended up in the DAF Museum Eindhoven.

View gallery image

The first ideas

We are arriving in 1954 and the first real drafts of a small DAF car came into existence. The DAF would have a full automatic gearbox, called the Variomatic, developed by van Doorne. We now know that gearbox as the Continue Variable Gearbox (CVT). And in 1958 the first DAF car was a thing, it was presented at the Amsterdam RAI and immediately was a -relative- success, in stead of the expected 25000 cars a year, the demand was so high that they doubled it to 50 000.

T​he first Daf's being presented at the Amsterdam RAI

T​he first Daf's being presented at the Amsterdam RAI

W​ow, 50 000 cars a year you might think. Well do bear in mind that the car was specifically developed for the Dutch market which is nowadays about 450 000 cars a year. Back in those days the market was way smaller so in that perspective 50 000 cars a year is pretty impressive.

T​he actual production

Production started in 1959 with the DAF 600, and to prove the car DAF set off to take part in a 3800km rally with 8 teams, of which 4 finished. They introduced a pick-up based on the 600 in 1960, for satisfaction of our inner American. And the sale spectrum was widen further with a more luxurious and faster 750. However, despite having a theoretical production capacity of 50 000, they only produced 24 000 cars in 1962 due to an employee shortage.

After 70 000 units both the 600 and 750 were taken out of production in 1963 and were replaced by the Daffodil and de Luxe. Just one year later the 100 000th Dutch car had been produced. They weren't sold in the Netherlands only, Belgium, Germany and France were big distribution markets too, with a combined total of 47 000 cars. Besides those countries, the Variomatic got the attention of the US Army, who tested this gearbox for two years and ordered a small DAF for the transport through very heavy terrain. This DAF Pony is able to transport it's own weight and you could just dismantle it and put two on top of each other to drop them with a parachute. After arriving on planet Earth again the two cars could be assembled again. Probably a bit faster than Clarkson, May & Hammond did.

B​lasting on full throttle

DAF technology was receiving quite some interest, especially the Variomatic. In 1963, a Formule-3 racecar was developed, powered by a 110 hp Cosworth engine combined with a Variomatic gearbox. After some testing, the Variomatic turned out to be a good choice since the car was significantly faster than the others. Fun fact, 30 years later, in 1993 Williams did some testing with a CVT gearbox in the F1 and one year later, the FIA banned all CVT gearboxes from the F1 racing series. DAF racing was also participating in rallys and touring-car racing. And don't forget the Dutch reverse driving races!!

T​he end

It's 1973, and DAF produced a record of 99 000 cars in one year, but 1973 is also the year of the oil-crisis. The oil-crisis was disastrous for DAF, they pulled back from all rally and racing series and even stopped production in 1974. Halfway 1974 negotiations with Volvo began and in 1975 Volvo took the majority of 75% of stocks. And on may first 1975 the name change was a fact and from then Volvo Car BV stood on the factories. That is however, not totally the end of the story, DAF was developing the Variomatic gearbox as Transmatic gearbox, but they did this under the name of a different company. Volvo was under the impression that they would get that system too, but according to DAF they didn't. Volvo brought it to court and... lost. This company (Doorne's Transmission) was a couple years later taken over by Bosch. And that marks the end of the biggest Dutch car manufacturer, they have built around 900 000 cars between 1959 and 1975.

I​t turned out to be longer than intended ;)

T​hank you so much for reading!