Four Wheel Drive

It was founded in 1909 in Clintonville, Wisconsin, as the Badger Four-Wheel Drive Auto Company by Otto Zachow and William Besserdich.

[1] Besserdich and Zachow's patented full time four wheel drive system combined a lockable center differential with double-Y constant velocity universal joints for steering.

The success of the four-wheel drive in early military tests prompted the company to switch from cars to trucks.

Early FWD vehicles were made with a track width of 4 feet 8+1⁄2 inches (1.435 m) so they could quickly be used on a standard gauge railway line merely by changing the wheels.

According to 1st Lt. E. R. Jackson, the official Ordnance Department observer: "The three (3) Four Wheel Drive Trucks were, in general, the most satisfactory in the Convoy and of all of the various makes represented, the F.W.D.

's alone were able to pull through all of the bad, muddy, and sandy stretches of road in Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada absolutely unaided."

This car was intended to demonstrate that the advantages FWD's lockable center differential were not limited to off-road driving.

Production ceased about 1936, but AEC exploited its experience with all-wheel drive in its Second World War Matador (4x4) and Marshall (6x6) vehicles.

The Original Four Wheel Drive Auto Company building
1909 Badger-FWD The Battleship
1918 ad in The Horseless Age
The Zachow and Besserdich Machine Shop, where they built their original four-wheel-drive vehicle
1926 FWD Model BT on display at the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, Walcott, Iowa, seen from the front and back. This 13,400 pound truck was often used to drill holes for electrical poles.
4-Ton Truck, 4x4 (Four Wheel Drive Model HAR-1)
FWD Corp P-2 crash tender (left)
Share of The Four Wheel Drive Auto Co., issued 6. May 1919