After Dave’s attempt last week to get us all into the world of trucks, I thought I’d bring us back to the somewhat more practical world of cars…but not too practical…
Here at ViaRETRO we love all classics (well, almost all) and we particularly love the quirky and the unusual, and if it’s rare and exclusive to boot, all the better. Best of all, if it’s all those things and not stupidly expensive, then we’re all over it.
While doing my usual interweb surfing one dull December afternoon, idly spending money I don’t have, it was a pleasant surprise to find not one, but two, candidates for our weekly Prime Find at the same auction. However, having just done a double-header, this time we’ll focus on just the one, and maybe the other one between now and the auction taking place on January 25th next year.
The auction house concerned is Anglia Car Auctions in King’s Lynn, in the county of Norfolk in South East England, perhaps best known for narrow boating along the picturesque Norfolk Broads waterways, although King’s Lynn itself is on the outer edges of the county.
So which of the two options have I gone for first? Well, I have a soft spot for German classics in general, and in particular those that feature in my family history, so…
This week’s Prime Find is certainly uncommon, even in its home country but particularly in the UK. It also comes onto the market with an astonishingly low 713 miles on its 53-year-old odometer and unusually is right-hand-drive. So, what have I found?
Well, it’s a 1966 Auto-Union DKW F11, with a 796cc three-cylinder, two-stroke engine, in white with grey and white upholstery, and has had only one registered owner over it’s lifetime.
Some people believe that the initials DKW stood for Dampf-Kraft-Wagen (steam-powered car), others for Deutsche Kraftfahrzeug Werke (German Motor Vehicle Works). Whatever the source of the initials, the company started making motorcycles in 1916, becoming the world’s largest motorbike manufacturer by the end of the 1920’s, using a small two-stroke engine that was named “Das kleine Wunder”, and indeed some claim that it’s from here that the initials DKW came, something I would really like to be true. In any case, it was one of the four companies that made up Auto-Union, the other three being Audi, Horch and Wanderer (hence the four rings in the Auto-Union logo) and is therefore part of the DNA of the modern-day Audi company.
DKW started making cars in its Berlin factories in 1928, then Dusseldorf and finally in Ingolstadt, where Audi is still producing cars today. It was one of the pioneers of front-wheel-drive or Frontantrieb, with the front wheels being driven by small, sub-1-litre two-stroke engines and whether or not the initials came from it, “Das kleine Wunder” also became how many DKW drivers referred to their chosen mode of transport.
Having said that, some of their cars were actually not all that small, despite being powered by these tiny engines. For instance, prior to the F11, DKW built the aerodynamically styled F89 and F91 family saloons and estates, and all were full four-seater saloons, over 14-feet long.
The F11 was introduced in 1963, being basically a less well-specified F12, which itself replaced the DKW Junior and was a pretty, dainty two-door saloon. At a fraction over 13 feet long, it was quite compact, but having front-wheel drive helped make it roomy enough to seat four, though with just 34 horses to call upon, it wasn’t powerful enough to move them along at anything more than a sedate pace, with a top speed of just 116kmh and a 0-100kmh time approaching thirty seconds. The interior was basic but functional – what you might expect from a German car of this period.
The F11 and F12 were sold alongside each other until the summer of 1965, by which time VW had acquired the Auto-Union business from Daimler Benz, and production of two-stroke DKW’s came to an end. As it was, DKW sales were suffering in the face of more powerful four-stroke engine competition from VW and Opel, and DKW manufacture in Germany ceased, although they continued to be built under licence in South America for a couple of years.
Getting back to our Prime Find, the car was first registered on the 3rd January 1966, and was apparently used by its only registered owner for the collection of his pension – he obviously didn’t have to go very far. Inherited by his son in 1983, it was dry stored for the next twenty‑six years until his own death in 2019, upon which his son then inherited the car. However, he decided not to keep it and so it was subsequently acquired by the vendor but having failed to find a mechanic who knows anything about DKW’s, it’s been decided to sell the car on. Treated with Carseal from new, it is described as structurally sound although there is some surface corrosion. It comes with some supporting documentation including the original green logbook, early V5, MoTs from the 1970’s and 1981 and various early documents, sales brochures, booklets and owner’s handbook.
We’ve borrowed some photos from the auctioneer’s website, which is here. This DKW F11 looks like a small slice of history, and with such low mileage will possibly end up in a collection, which would be a pity, but perhaps someone will deem this little car’s relatively low financial value not worth protecting and will at least take it out and about during the summer months. With an estimate of between just £4-6,000, it’s not a huge financial investment and will definitely provide lots of smiles for the money . What do ViaRETRO readers think?
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us inspire by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk