[2] In 1916, Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen founded a factory in Zschopau, Saxony, Germany, to produce steam fittings.

[3] That steam car was unsuccessful, and in 1919 he made toy two-stroke engines under the name Des Knaben Wunsch – "the boy's wish".

DKWs always used two-stroke engines, reflecting the company's position by the end of the 1920s as the world's largest producer of motorcycles.

They were the first volume production cars in Europe with front wheel drive, and were powered by transversely mounted two-cylinder two-stroke engines.

[8] Between 1929 and 1940, DKW produced a less well remembered but technically intriguing series of rear-wheel drive cars called (among other names) Schwebeklasse and Sonderklasse with two-stroke V4 engines.

It was put into production after World War II, first as an Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau (IFA) F9 (later Wartburg) in Zwickau, East Germany, and shortly afterwards in DKW-form from Düsseldorf as the 3=6 or F91.

As Auto Union was based in Saxony in what became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), it took some time for it to regroup after the war.

The company was registered in West Germany as Auto Union GmbH in 1949, first as a spare-part provider, but soon to take up production of the RT 125 motorcycle and a new delivery van, called a Schnellaster F800.

The cooling system was of the free convection type assisted by a fan driven from a pulley mounted at the front end of the crankshaft.

In 1956, the very rare DKW Monza was put into small-scale production on a private initiative, with a sporting two-seater body of glassfiber on a standard F93 frame.

It was first called Solitude, but got its final name from the long-distance speed records it made on the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy in December 1956.

All the three-cylinder two-stroke post-war cars had some sporting potential and formed the basis for many rally victories in the 1950s and early 1960s.

This made DKW the most winning car brand in the European rally league for several years during the fifties.

[11] From 1956 to 1967, DKW cars were made in Brazil by the local company Vemag (Veículos e Máquinas Agrícolas S.A., "Vehicles and Agricultural Machinery Inc.").

[13] The original plans were to build the Candango off-roader (Munga), a utility vehicle and a four-door sedan, called Vemaguet and Belcar respectively.

The company also produced a luxury coupe (the DKW Fissore) and the off-road Munga (locally called Candango).

The most beautiful were the Cupé Fissore, which had many famous owners (Julio Sosa, César Luis Menotti, and others).

The last version of the Auto Union Combi/Pick-up (DKW F1000 L), launched in 1969, survived a few months and was bought out by IME, which continued production until 1979.

From 1949 to 1962, DKW produced the Schnellaster with a trailing-arm rear suspension system with springs in the cross bar assembly.

In 1931, Arnold Zoller started building split-singles and this concept made DKW the dominant racing motorcycle in the Lightweight and Junior classes between the wars.

[21] This included off-road events like the International Six Days Trial where the marque scored some considerable inter-war year successes alongside Bavarian Motor Works At the same time, the company also had some success with super-charged racing motorcycles which because of their light weight were particularly successful in the ISDT[22] The motorcycle branch produced famous models such as the RT 125 pre- and post-World War II, and after the war with production at the original factory in GDR becoming MZ[1] it made 175, 250 and 350 (cc) models.