Braun

Engineer and industrialist August Braun established the Erste Österreichische Motorfahrzeugfabrik August Braun & Comp. in Vienna's Rosensteingasse with Wilhelm Stift senior, beginning automobile production in 1899. The first car combined a 523 cc, 4.5 PS De Dion-Bouton single-cylinder engine with front-wheel drive—an exceptionally early application of driven steering wheels—and was compared in appearance with the Parisienne. Period reporting preserved unusually specific engine dimensions, an 18-litre tank and unequal 650 mm front/800 mm rear wheels. Braun did not settle immediately on one architecture. By 1900 the range included separate cars with engines at the front, beneath the seating and at the rear. The December 1900 'new Braun voiturette' placed its engine under the front seat; a closely matching vehicle photographed in early Romanian motoring history appears with an additional forward cooling arrangement, likely running development prompted by heat. Original type names, prices, transmission details and output totals for these later layouts have not survived in accessible summaries. Stift left at the end of 1900 to establish Celeritas and subsequently became associated with the Gräf & Stift lineage; those companies' cars are not Braun models. August Braun continued the Vienna factory independently until his death and automobile production ended in 1910. The old Rosensteingasse works later housed Braun & Braun, founded by his sons in 1925, but that import/industrial business was not an automobile-production revival. At least one Braun car was displayed at the Automobil- und Motorradmuseum Austria in Gramatneusiedl around 2000. The catalog retains four defensible layout families and limits specifications to their documented model years; the company's 1910 endpoint is not used to fabricate uninterrupted production for each 1900 design.

Text adapted from “Braun” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗