- Founded
- 1916 – 1966
- Founder
- Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen
- Headquarters
- Chemnitz, Germany
DKW was a German car and motorcycle marque. DKW was one of the four companies that formed Auto Union in 1932 and thus became an ancestor of the modern-day Audi company. In 1916, Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen founded a factory in Zschopau, Saxony, Germany, to produce steam fittings. That year he attempted to produce a steam car, German: Dampfkraftwagen (lit. steam power-wagon), from which the acronym DKW is derived. That steam car was unsuccessful, and in 1919 he made toy two-stroke engines under the name des Knaben Wunsch – the boy's wish. He put a slightly modified version of the toy engine into a motorcycle and called it das kleine Wunder – the little wonder, and by the late 1920s DKW had become the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer. In September 1924, DKW bought Slaby-Beringer, saving them from Germany's hyperinflation. Rudolf Slaby became chief engineer at DKW. In 1932, DKW merged with Audi, Horch and Wanderer to form Auto Union. After World War II, DKW moved to West Germany. The original factory became MZ. Auto Union came under Daimler-Benz ownership in 1957 and was purchased by the Volkswagen Group in 1964. The last started German-built DKW car was the F102, which ceased production in 1966 (the last model bas DKW Munga, which production had started already in 1956). F102's successor, the four-stroke F103, was marketed under the Audi brand, another Auto Union marque. DKW-badged cars continued to be built under license in Brazil and Argentina until 1967 and 1969 respectively. The DKW trademark is currently owned by Auto Union GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Audi AG which also owns the rights to other historical trademarks and intellectual property of the Auto Union combine.
Text adapted from “DKW” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗
.jpg?width=640)
.jpg?width=640)
