DKW ROAD TRIP
What better way to celebrate CAR’S 60th birthday than by buying a 60-year-old car and undertaking a 1 700 km cross-country road trip?
We take a car we first tested in 1957 on a 1 700 km road trip.
IT sounded like a gunshot. Reverberating through the cabin, the back re rattled the Deek’s windows almost as much is it did my nerves. It was my rst day driving the six-decade-old car and, frankly, I was beginning to wonder whether Nicol Louw, our technical editor, and I were being way too optimistic when we rst came up with the idea six months earlier.
Now, sitting in a DKW 3=6, stuck in Klerksdorp’s traf c in a classic car that had just sent most of the city diving for cover, I was beginning to have some serious doubts. It didn’t help that the car’s former owner, Dick de Bruyn, was sitting in the Audi Q7 behind us and, even through the Deek’s tiny rear-view mirror, I could see his eyes widen.
After we’d rst spit-balled the basic concept, Nicol had walked into my of ce with the news that a good friend of his father-in-law had a DKW 3=6 exactly like the one we tested in our September 1957 issue (read that republished road test on page 54), and there was a possibility that it might be for sale. The only problem was that the car was in Mokopane, Limpopo, and a road trip to Cape Town would be a 1 700 km affair.
Cue some discussions with Dick, who right away seemed very con dent that his old classic would be up for it. After a further exchange of phone calls and emails, a sum was agreed upon and the Deek belonged to CAR. Dick also kindly agreed to do the trip with us as both a last chance to drive the car he’s owned for many years and to be there should we require any on-the- y repairs.
Also accompanying us on this journey would be a brand-new Audi Q7 3,0 TDI.
Not only would it be our back-up car, carrying our lensman Kian Eriksen and Dick, but it somewhat poignantly would be shepherding its ancestor on this long journey that would practically span the length of the country. Audi, of course, was one of the original four brands along with Horch, Wanderer and DKW that would combine to form Auto Union, which would then be renamed Audi. The DKW represents one of those iconic four rings that the Q7 sports on its nose. After an early-morning ight to Lanseria Airport on a warm Sunday, we collected a shiny white Q7 and drove it north to Mokopane, where we’d get our rst sighting of the Deek we’d bought. Dick had driven it there to be serviced by local DKW guru Ivan Meester, whose task it was to make sure it was in tip-top shape
for the long journey ahead.
After spending the night at a B&B, day one’s 750 km trek to Kimberley saw an early start with Dick behind the wheel. Unlike modern cars that are all dead easy to operate, classics usually have little idiosyncracies that are only ampli ed over the passage of time. It’s usually prudent to witness someone driving it who knows the car before getting behind the wheel.
With that in mind, I sat in the passenger seat watching Dick pilot the rst leg to Pretoria, listening carefully to every nugget of advice and carefully watching what he did to hustle the Deek along. Its 800 cm3, three-cylinder, two-stroke engine was revvy enough and could comfortably keep up with modern traf c, but there were two things to take note of. One, it has very little torque, so any hill would see its speedometer needle plummet; and two, the drum brakes don’t quite possess the stopping power of the modern cars we are used to. It was therefore best to allow for plenty of distance between you and the car in front.
The transmission is a four-speed manual column-shifter, with rst gear a slight dog-leg towards you and down. Reverse, on the other hand, is a dog-leg up and away. Clearly a crucial difference to get right. The shifts were also best conducted with feel and nesse rather than any brute force.
Being a two-stroke engine, oil lubrication does not happen via a separate oil system, but by mixing oil into the petrol. It’s a 40:1 ratio, which meant we’d have to add 500 ml of two-stroke oil to every 20 litres of fuel we’d pump into the 38-litre fuel tank. And oh, said Dick, “Remember to never park the car with its nose pointing up. The small pre-carburettor will ood and you won’t be able to start it.”
I was far more nervous getting into the Deek’s driver’s seat than that of any
supercar I can remember, especially with Dick sitting next to me. Gingerly making my way through the gears, I got it up to 50 mph (80 km/h), sticking doggedly to the yellow line to allow the traffic to pass and keeping a vigilant eye on my mirrors. “Relax Steve,” I hear from next to me, “I’m telling you, this car is bulletproof. You can take her up to 60 or 65.”
Which is what I did, feeling more and more confident, the needle began to nudge 65 mph before my two-hour stint was up and I handed over to Nicol. The only little mishap was that backfire in Klerksdorp, but I quickly realised that after the lunch stop I’d forgotten to push
the pre-carb choke back in and the resultant overly rich fuel mixture had caused the explosion in the exhaust pipe.
Nicol and I would swap driving stints throughout the trip – about two hours was as much as either of us could manage before we’d start to feel fatigued and escaped to the comforts of the Q7 – and by 18h00 on day one, we turned onto a dirt road outside Kimberley to check in at our accommodation for the night, Langberg Guest Farm. Back in the heyday of the Kimberley diamond rush, the farm bred huge Clydesdale horses for mine work, but now its oversized stables have been converted to beautiful en- suite rooms. It’s exactly the kind of roadside accommodation that a family travelling in their DKW back in 1957 would likely have spent the night in. With the big leg behind us, days two and three were shorter 450 km stints through to Beaufort West along the N12 before the final leg to Cape Town. Especially when cutting through the barren Karoo with its big sky and flat scrub broken by low koppies, driving the Deek genuinely felt like we had stepped back six decades when road travel was slower, safer and a real adventure. More often than
not, though, that reverie was broken by a modern car blasting past or that current scourge of our intercity national roads, freight trucks.
With the deterioration of our railways system, there is an overload of transported freight these days, so that a road trip becomes a real feat of vigilance and concentration. And especially so in the Deek. Back in 1957, what few trucks were plying their trade on these roads were probably doing 70 to 80 km/h, which was not a problem for the Deek and it’s 110 km/h cruising speed. These days, however, with our modern behemoths barrelling along at the DKW’S speed – and sometimes two or three of them travelling nose to tail – overtaking became an exercise in careful planning and extreme caution as the Deek strained every sinew to inch past.
Despite what was asked of this old girl, however, she remarkably never missed a beat; an astonishing feat for a car this old. The only small issue we had was coming into Laingsburg when she suddenly cut out. Luckily, we could freewheel down into the town and, after a quick call to Ivan, we’d established the idle jet had probably become blocked and it didn’t take more than a few minutes to locate the brass needle jet, blow out the tiny piece of grit and the Deek was back to her purring best.
The nal day was a cruise into Cape Town, with some more memorable scenery marking our route; Matjiesfontein, the descent into the Hex River Valley, and the Dutoitskloof Pass climb being the standouts. Appropriately, we handed the keys to Dick for this nal leg over the pass and into Cape Town, and it was he who pulled the Deek into the CAR garage at 15h00 on the Wednesday afternoon.
We’re not quite sure what we’re going to do with our Deek. We might keep it, or perhaps sell it to an owner who will cherish it and keep it on the road. Whatever we do, it will be in our care for the whole of our birthday year and you can bet it will be taken on regular outings by the CAR team. One thing I do know, though, is that for Nicol and I, it will be hard to see it go. This car ferried us on one of the most memorable road trips either of us has ever done.