OPPOSING FORCE
Water-cooled, front-engined, front-drive – this pioneering German van couldn’t be more different from Volkswagen’s ubiquitous Type 2 – but is it as good? We drive one to find out
What you’re looking at is significant because it’s the very first Auto Union vehicle to be made following World War Two. What’s more, it’s the first vehicle to be produced in Ingolstadt. Such a fact was almost certainly lost on the besuited, purple-faced Audi A4 driver in our rear-view mirror, heading the queue quickly forming behind him.
Released a few months before the VW Type 2 in 1949, the DKW Schnellaster found itself in direct competition with its counterpart from Wolfsburg, remaining so throughout its entire life and serving as its polar opposite.
It features a pioneering cab-over-engine design, with the front axle ahead of the driver. Everyone’s familiar with the Mini: a decade before, though, the Schnellaster applied a similar lay-out, right down to a transverselymounted engine, to maximise space.
It has a load carrying capacity of 800kg, accessed via a large back door. If you happen to be shorter than Tom Cruise, it’s actually possible to stand up inside. The amount of space there is impressive and the loading height ( just 40cm off the ground) is far lower than that of the rear-engined Type 2. A flat floor throughout also ensures flexibility and a variety of body options were built, including panel vans (such as the one we’re featuring here), buses, pick-ups, cab trucks, ambulances and so on.
Entry into the Schnellaster is via a wide ‘suicide’ door. There’s then a step-up to the seat before we try to settle into what is an upright driving position. Being right-handdrive, we’re at least on familiar grounds in terms of where we’re sitting. Current owner, Adrian Baughn, asserts that this is the only factory-built RHD example in the country.
Ahead is a large three-spoke leather-clad wheel, upon which you tend to rest your forearms while driving – the steering column is angled only slightly from horizontal. Pedals are tightly spaced, set high and with long travel.
There are zero luxuries, unless you count the ashtray that sits within a bracket attached to the dashboard. The pressed panel that forms the fascia, though, is quite ornate, with ribbing that focuses the eye towards a speedometer calibrated up to 100mph. We suspect that may be a tad ambitious, though…
The styling of the headlights and grille gives it the same happy demeanour of a ‘Frogeye’ Sprite; the Schnellaster has that same appearance of having escaped from an Enid Blyton novel, but if it looks cute and cuddly, then the noise it generates is anything but. The engine sounds, if not from a motorcycle, as though it’s from the sort of highly-strung single-seater racer that you might have spotted on track at the Donington Historic Festival earlier this month. There’s an inherent echo within such a sparse space and the high-pitched metallic shriek as the revs build reverberates around the interior. It’s deafening. The model designation 3=6 is intended to be taken literally; it’s powered by a three-cylinder two-stoke engine, watercooled and fed by a single Solex carburettor, which DKW felt offered similar power and refinement to a six-cylinder four-stroke. And given the van’s size and its carrying potential, that really needs to be the case. While this might be true in terms of torque, performance-wise we’re not so sure. High revs are required at all times in order to make decent progress and even then speed builds slowly. Certainly, once you’re up to a decent pace you’ll be keen to maintain it wherever possible. The name ‘Schnellaster’ roughly translates as ‘rapid transport’ (and here we were thinking it was ‘noisy box’) but unlike its ‘3=6’ moniker, it is definitely wishful thinking. The vehicle’s history suggests that there’s a full-synchromesh column-change gearbox fitted, however we need to doubledeclutch while shifting up and down the gears to achieve changes without the ’box baulking. Thankfully the situation improves later during our time with the Schnellaster, but it’s still tricky to transition smoothly between gears. Generous force is required to engage each ratio, which feels at odds with the spindly lever in your right hand.
The Schnellaster is very bouncy, even on smooth stretches of road, though this doesn’t translate into sawing at the wheel to keep going straight. The rack-and-pinion steering has an unexpectedly precise feel, let down only by an abysmal turning circle. The wooden load bed bangs and crashes somewhat disconcertingly over uneven ground, though this would perhaps be reduced with a full load stowed away in the back.
Independently-sprung, with a transverse front leaf spring and rear trailing arms and torsion bar, the quality of the handling surprises, too, compromised somewhat by its height, which leads to serious roll in the corners that means your passenger, with no grab handle to hold on to, will struggle to remain seated throughout.
It’s not easy to drive the Schnellaster. You come to appreciate that the engine has been geared for pulling power, not speed, so there’s absolutely nothing rapid about it. However, there’s a real sense of achievement when you do finally manage to move up the gears into fourth from a standing start without the gearbox complaining. Like us, you might even acclimatise to the noise of the engine, too.