It may seem remarkable to find an advertisement for this DKW saloon in an American sports car magazine, but the German manufacturers, Auto Union in Zwickau, clearly thought that their car would appeal. The advertising copy laid much emphasis on three aspects: interior space, durability and simplicity. Directly under the photo were the competition successes of the DKW: winner of the European Touring Championship for 1955, winner of the German Championships for Touring Cars 1955, and winner of the up-to-1300cc class in the Monte Carlo Rally in 1956. Front-wheel drive and only 7 moving parts to the engine were other vaunted attributes, and the advertisement listed all the parts that were NOT in the engine: valves, tappets and camshafts – for this was 2-stroke. The space issue was simply addressed by the name of the car: the BIG DKW 3=6.
This angle of attack on the American market was not surprising. The USA had taken to the qualities of the Volkswagen Beetle, and a bigger car with competition provenance, a simple engine and the handling qualities of front-wheel drive was aiming straight at the Volkswagen buyer.
This was a genuinely sporting car. The Australian Wheels magazine called the 1957 F93 model (the car shown in our Snapshot) the “Triple-Banger Rocket” (the engine was a three-cylinder of 896cc). The South African CAR magazine of November 1957 said: “If you yearn to own a sports car, but, for family reasons, you must have a saloon that is capable of seating four or five people, the DKW 3=6 will probably appeal to you immensely”. Famous drivers to compete in a DKW 3=6 included Jim Clark, Tony Brooks and, in 1965 at Interlagos in Brazil, Juan Manuel Fangio. Among famous owners were the aviator Elly Beinhorn, German World heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmeling, and the film star Anita Ekberg.
The 3=6 name was intended to highlight the equivalence between the car’s two-stroke three-cylinder engine and a four-stroke six-cylinder engine. However, although twice the number of explosions per revolution did increase torque, any power advantage was dissipated in additional heat from the engine which needed a large and noisy energy-consuming fan. The 3=6 name was dropped in 1958 in the USA and the car became the DKW 900 – an approximation to engine capacity.
The 3=6 or 900 continued until 1959 but its successor, the Auto Union 1000, was made from 1958.
Image courtesy of The Richard Roberts Archive: www.richardrobertsarchive.org.uk
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