411 history

[MGVWfan]

I personally like those old DKW's that ended up as Trabants (or was it Wartburgs)?

[raygreenwood]

Thanks for that link to the Horch Uber. Yep...those were the cars of the stars in those days. Ray

[tuna]

From other threads on here...I have read that the original 411...was potentially destined to have the 911 2.2 6 cylinder. I have also heard tha there is one, of that configuration in the museum....maybe I heard wrong. Iwill dig up some more history. Hopefully Tuna will chime in...as he has most of it memorized.

From what I've seen on the WWW, there is a Type 4-esque car in the VW museum in Germany that indeed has a 911 engine.

I think this was the car, but I'm not sure:
http://web.telia.com/~u31614243/VWmuseu ... 6.jpg.html

Tuna

[raygreenwood]

Yep...thats the one I was thinking of...that light blue one. Has anyone else noted the similarity in base styling of that car...to the Audi 100 LS! I keep saying that there are a whole lot of very "audi-esque details in the way these cars were constructed and styled.
Though I realize that NSU was primarily bought by VW...they had been contributing and collaborating with Auto-union/ audi at various times. I believe there were a lot of diferent "genes" involved in these cars.

Love that rear quarter panel gas flap on the silver one! Ray

[MGVWfan]

Hey guys! Get a load of this...

http://trabant.shocauto.com/trabant_history.htm

It turns out the fomer Horch factory in Zwickau (former East Germany) that produced various Auto Union cars prewar, then IFA cars (including the Trabant, originally a DKW design) post-war, produced a Trabant with a 1.1L VW Polo engine before converting to produce VW parts, according to the above link. Sort of like the gathering of the clan, if you will!

[vwbill]

Wow, thanks for the pics! I love the baby blue one! Wouldnt it be nice to have a engine lid like that one; it kinda reminds me of a corvair alittle.
I remember the Audi 100 and everytime I would see one I would think of how it look familiar to the 411/412. bill

[raygreenwood]

Nice to have authoritative confiormation of the family history. So it was Audi included in the original 4 rings/families....and not just aquiring them all. Iwill have to dig around and see which article was the source of my confusion. At some points there has been collaboration...heavily...from NSU on numerous projects. Also, its worth it to note that NSU had some deralings on some of the original aircooled engines in the early days before production started and things had actually been decided upon. They were after all....aircooled. Great site! Ray

[Guest]

By the way....the diesels in the Tiger tank mark 1...were 500hp maybachs.

Ray, all tiger tankers would´ve been glad about that . . .

In fact all german tank had gasoline engines.
Even after facing the famed and feared T34 in russia,
the germans sticked with the gasoline engines.

regards Fritz

[raygreenwood]

Actually thats not entirely true. The tiger 1's all had a Maybach diesel. Only those using the Porsche petro-electric motor generator drive....that would be tiger ll with both Porsche and Henschel turrets (panther chassis), Koenigs tiger, Ferdinand and Panthers...had gasoline. Many others were converted as well back to diesel late in the war, as fuel sources became critical, as diesel is much easier to refine and yields more fuel fraction per barrel than gasoline. Also, gasoline was in short supply for aviation. Ray

[wallacehartley]

The Maybach diesel was fitted to the Tiger, to my knowledge - yes, around 500 horses worth.
Haven't you guys read Sven Hassel??

Actually, wartime Germany did the intial development on the oil-from-coal process in an attempt to alleviate their fuel shortages.
The process was later refined and perfected by SASOL in South Africa during the oil embargo of the bad old days. We were almost self-sufficient fuelwise, and still make most of our own fuel and plastics etc. from coal at the 3 SASOL plants.

SASOL is currently in several JV with Chevron, Qatar Petroleum etc, and has representation inNorth America as well!!!

[raygreenwood]

Love all of this info. Yes..that was the purpose of the nasty bombing raid on Ploeste...to kill the syn-fuel plants. They really had some cool early syn-fuel technology. Amazing piece of history. Ray