Bohrer

Master blacksmith Thomas Bohrer senior founded a Klagenfurt workshop in 1871 to make agricultural implements and horse-drawn wagons. His son Alfred Bohrer visited the Paris Exposition in 1900 and returned with a used 4 PS De Dion-Bouton single-cylinder engine, inspiring the family business to enter automobile manufacture in 1901 under the Bohrer name. The first car combined that engine and a two-speed transmission with a frame constructed from ash wood. In 1903 the family replaced its original power unit with a 6 PS Fafnir engine, magneto ignition and a three-speed gearbox. The upgraded car demonstrated its durability in 1904 by becoming the first automobile to cross both the Loibl Pass and the Katschberg in each direction. When Austrian registration plates were introduced in 1906, it received the Carinthian mark F 6. Bohrer produced eight complete automobiles in total before ending motor-car manufacture during winter 1906. No surviving source separates the hand-built output into named or rated factory types, so the catalog retains one collective Kleinwagen family and does not invent seven missing model names. The founding workshop continued until 1908, when the first car was also given a racing-style body. That was a rebody of the existing vehicle rather than a ninth automobile or separate series. The car survives at Historama in Ferlach, providing unusually strong material evidence for this tiny marque. The 1871 company foundation is preserved separately from the 1901–06 automobile-production span, and unrelated firms bearing the similar Böhler or Bohrer names are excluded.

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