Gläser-Karosserie
In 1898 Friedrich August Emil Heuer [de] who had hitherto been one of the manufacturers supplying unfinished carriages, became a co-owner of the Gläser business.
[3] 1902 was also the year in which Gläser-Karosserie decided to diversify into car bodies, although it was not till 1905 that they were able to deliver their first vehicle, using a 45 hp (34 kW) chassis from Daimler of Untertürkheim.
[4] In 1913 a site for the construction of larger premises was acquired, from a former curtain and lace making business, at Arnold Street (Arnoldstraße 18-24) in the Johannstadt quarter of Dresden.
This increasingly restricted bespoke car body builders to the upper end of the price scale, but that was already the sector where Gläser-Karosserie were at their strongest, providing bespoke bodies for customers who had purchased their cars in bare chassis form from any one of a wide range of auto makers including (but not restricted to) Adler, BMW, Hanomag, Horch, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Steyr and Wanderer.
Dresdner Bank was the principal banker of Gläserkarosserie G.m.b.H and also of Auto Union, another Saxony based auto-business that underwent a major restructuring in order to survive the aftermath of the Great Depression.
[4] From 1935 the factory was also supporting German rearmament with special bodies for "commando/staff cars" based on Steyr and Skoda chassis, and specialist conversions of Ford and Opel commercial vehicles.
By the time war resumed in September 1939 they were also producing a plethora of components and sub-assemblies for Messerchmitt fighter planes.
By the mid-1940s Bachmann had received an allocation of 1,000 foreign workers along with between 150 and 180 Soviet prisoners of war in order to keep the factories running.
They were then moved in March 1945 to Neustadt an der Waldnaab where it was believed that they were less at risk of destruction from aerial bombing by the British and Americans.
Serial production started, in 1947, of cabriolet bodied versions of the IFA F8, which was in effect a barely changed successor to the pre-war DKW F8.
KWD also participated in development of the composite plastic bodywork of the AWZ P70 Zwickau, itself a precursor to the better remembered Trabant.
By this time KWD was also assembling Bastei caravans at three nearby satellite factories in Dresden, Rosenthal and Wilsdruff.
In 1994 "VEB KWD" was privatised, becoming a major supplier of floor panels and a plethora of other sheet steel components to Volkswagen and to the German auto industry more generally.
