Odd post war vehicles

[Phil Blinkhorn]

Perhaps the oddest post war vehicle I ever drove was the Wartburg 353 Knight.

In 1945 the Eisenach BMW factory found itself in the Russian zone. Prior to WW2 it had produced a licenced built Austin 7 and was involved with DKW (nowadays Audi) in the production of a two stroke, three cylinder 900 cc engine which had a minimal number of moving parts mounted on a strong chassis frame.

Post war, with an economy in need of hard currency and finding itself in a bloc that had little or no access to western technology, the Eisenach factory took the DKW engine and chassis and built both saloon and estate bodies around the technology succeeding in selling the car in the developing world, some parts of western Europe and throughout the communist bloc.

By the late 1950s the body design had been modernised to one that looked like a slimmer 1956 Vauxhall Cresta featuring a two tone paint scheme and a host of features which, in the west and the UK in particular, were regarded as extras. The car again sold around the world including, strangely, the USA and a few were sold in Ireland but none appeared in the UK.

In 1962 the engine size was changed to 992 cc and improvements were made to the drive train. In 1963 Industria Ltd of London displayed the car at the London Motor Show and, over the next 2 years, sold around 300 examples. In 1965 a new chassis, suspension and more power from the 992 cc engine combined to offer a much improved car, though the body shape was retained. A further 550 vehicles appeared on UK roads before, in late 1966, the Knight appeared.

The new car featured a new chassis, a developed 992 cc engine with only 7 moving parts, and a three box saloon body developed from a design for a Polish built car which never materialised (there was also the estate version, the Wartburg Tourist). The car, compared to the previous model and many of the late 1950s cars still on UK roads, looked bang up to date, though it stood a little too high off the road to be considered good looking.

For £575 (less than the price of a 1967 Mini) the car offered a full 5 seat body made from high grade steel and finished with deep and comfortable upholstery, good interior instrumentation, a heater, reclining front seats, reversing lights, radio, cigar lighter and a very full tool kit - almost all of which were not even offered as extras on many British de Luxe or even so called Super models of the time.

More than all of this the Eisenach factory had retained both pride in its BMW heritage and the belief in quality that had helped the company sell its products for over 20 years in a world where many countries were hostile to, or did not recognise the legitimacy of, the regime under which it had to operate. The low cost and specification led to UK sales totalling 19472 between 1966 and 1976 when the type was withdrawn in the UK under emission and safety rules.

In 1967 my father, tired of constant travelling and working for a company with a dodgy financial position left his job and set up on his own. Leaving behind his company owned 1965 Super Minx he needed a reasonably sized car but was strapped for cash.

The Knight provided the solution and GVR 957E, painted dark green, arrived from Simpsons of Colne to Carlton Rd, Heaton Mersey and joined my 1959 upright Ford Popular (about to breath its last) on the drive.

At first sight the car was everything it promised. The body had a massive boot, inside the passenger compartment was lit by big windows and had a very spacious air, the plastic seats were soft and comfortable, the instrumentation was clear and all the "extras" were there as standard. There had to be a catch. A catch? - there were plenty!

Opening the massive and heavy bonnet revealed a tiny engine. There would be no problem should work be needed in the engine compartment as there was room for another engine. Not that much work was envisaged by the makers for, as the quaintly translated handbook stated, service was required at 1500 miles, then at 30,000 miles, then 60,000 miles - such was the benefit of an engine with 7 moving parts.

The gear change was floor mounted and offered three forward and one reverse as on my Ford Pop but, whereas the Pop and my soon to arrive Cortina Mk II had direct (and very long) gear levers, the Knight had a remote linkage which made the lever feel like a lettuce leaf and made selection on the all syncromesh box hard work. Not that gear changing was a simple matter. There was an intriguing push/pull button which the handbook referred to as the "freewheel control".

When engaged the gearbox and transmission behaved normally and changes up and down would be as easy as the remote gear change would allow. Use the freewheel device and changes up were as normal but, take your foot off the accelerator and the engine would disengage from the transmission and, because there would be no engine braking effect, the car would run freely, the engine/transmission re-engaging on applying the accelerator again.

Changes down could be preselected without the clutch and come into effect by pressing the accelerator though it was "advised" that changes from 3rd to 1st be avoided except "in case of danger".

The engine ran on two stroke mixture where available but generally fuelling was achieved by filling with the lowest octane petrol available and topping up with 2 stroke oil, carried in a can in the boot and applied to the fuel filler by means of a funnel, thoughtfully supplied by the makers.

The car would accelerate quite sharply, even when fully loaded, but ran out of steam quickly and could barely make its top speed of 75 mph and was always followed by a haze of blue smoke.

Braking was by means of drum brakes all round and stopping and steering in the wet when in freewheel, seeking to achieve the best mpg of 29 as opposed to around 25 mpg with the transmission permanently engaged, was an art form that needed to be swiftly learnt if, at best excursions off road, at worst expensive collisions were to be avoided. In snow the car could be lethal.

For all of that, in late June 1967, my father, mother, 16 and 9 year old sisters and I set out from Stockport to Rome. Travelling via Dover, Calais, Rheims, Lausanne, the St Bernard Tunnel and then down the Autostrada, we made Rome in 4 and a half days with my father and I sharing the driving. Fuelling on the way down caused few difficulties. The first service station we stopped at in Italy was tended by an ancient looking Italian "Mamma" dressed all in black.

I had the information regarding the fuel to be used written out in Italian and presented it to her to be greeted with a broad East End London accent and followed by a number of other useful phrases and directions written out for me in a beautifully rounded hand!

We drove through the night down the Autostrada and arrived in Rome around 06.00 and then had to find our way to Rocca di Papa in the mountains to meet my brother. On arrival we found the handbrake wouldn't engage and, as the hotel was on a steep road, we had to disengage the free wheel, park in to the kerb with reverse engaged and chock the wheels with stones.

With the nearest Wartburg dealer in Zurich we were a little concerned about fixing the problem but my brother's Italian, the ingenuity of an Italian blacksmith and the common sense engineering of the Eisenach designers solved the problem. The cable which operated the handbrake had seized and caused the brake shoe on one side to tip so that the shoe was in constant, light contact with the drum. Applying the footbrake pulled the whole shoe onto the drum so braking wasn't an issue but with the footbrake off the shoe resumed its in contact position and the leading edge had worn down and the heat, plus the heat of an Italian summer which offered far less cooling than would be expected at home, had caused some distortion on the drum.

Two days sightseeing without the car saw the assembly removed, a new cable fitted and the drum reshaped by the blacksmith. The new cable came from a FIAT dealer and was adapted for length, the brake shoes were a European standard size and there were no oddball fixings or assemblies to puzzle over.

A few miles tentative driving showed the drum to be perfectly round and the system to be as effective as it could be - as was borne out when the repaired parts were replaced by genuine spares under warranty on return to the UK.

The return trip was by way of Aosta, the St Gothard Tunnel, Altdorf, Basle, Baden-Baden, Brussels and London and was only remarkable for the relative ease of the trip, for a West German coach driver trying to run me off the road near Lucerne, yelling "Communists" as he drove past and the amount of blue smoke we left behind us.

Whilst a fun trip - and a great introduction for a 20 year old to a lifetime's regular driving in Europe - I was not a little relieved to return to my Cortina which, though not as well equipped, was more sure footed, had better acceleration and didn't pollute the world even if I did have to pay United Biscuits 10/- per week out of my £9-17-6d per week salary to use it.

The Knight survived until 1969 when my brother, faced with an urgent, though by no means an emergency stop in the rain near Swindon, learned the hard way that the Knight without engine braking needed more room to stop than the newly introduced B747 on landing and, to avoid hitting a very solid vehicle end on, turned to the central reservation and, promptly rolled the car, proving the sturdiness of the roof and pillars, but bending it beyond economic repair. My brand new tool set was in the boot and when he was released from hospital next day and went to claim the vehicle contents it was missing, the Police explanation being that "it probably flew out when the boot lid opened in the roll. Right - a 2 foot x 1 foot x 6 inch wooden box flew out and became invisible.

[Sparkly]

To Rome in a Wartburg. That's brilliant Phil. There are Wartburg 353 videos on Youtube if you want to hear the 'roar' of the engine again, including this one for TV ad with, based on what you say, a very brave camera operator. YouTube - Wartburg 353 commercial in TV of DDR s

[Phil Blinkhorn]

Thanks Sparkly. I came across the You Tube videos the other day after talking to a friend about cars we had driven and hearing he hadn't seen a Wartburg Knight here in Irelend.

The conversation and seeing the clips motivated me to write the piece.

The last time I had a good look at a 353 was in Berlin in 1994 and I had seen them in their home environment in East Berlin in the early 1980s where the Stasi and the Police used them extensively - the Police had them as pursuit cars - 75 mph was enough when chasing a Trabi!

[mr angry]

Phil,

Bet you preferred the Mark II Cortina did'nt you!! I do recollect quite a lot of East European cars being sold in the 70s, when I started to drive. Moskviches were quite common at one time but they rusted so rapidly that I havent seen one for years.

Another was the Lada and FSO Polski Fiat, Russian and Polish built versions of the Fiat 124 and 125. One of our teachers at school bought a Lada in about '74 when they first came out, I remember for some reason we used to call it a push me pull you car as it sort of looked the same from the front as the back, boxy.

A Lada and Polski Fiat were amongst the first care I ever drove after passing my test in '77 and I didnt dislike either of them although I thought the gears on the Polski were stiff and awkward.

The early Ladas were more or less identical to the Fiat 124 but the later ones they renamed the Riva and made a half hearted attempt to make them look a bit more modern by putting black bumpers on them, which I thought made it look awful.

Your Cortina must have been one of the early Mark IIs if it had the long direct gear lever as this was a carry over from the Mark I. The Mark II had this until a mid term facelift in '68 changed to the remote linkage with the short lever, as on the then new Mark I Escort, and I think this was carried over onto all subsequent Cortinas up to and including the Mark V. At the same time, on the Mark II, the grille was slightly changed and was partly painted black, the early ones were completely chrome.

My first car was an Austin A40 Farina, new in '67, GBV 659E, which I bought in '79 when I was 19 and ran it for five years, I loved that car, it was very reliable, even though it had 170,000+ miles on by the time I sold it although I had to do quite a bit of work on the body over the time I had it

[Phil Blinkhorn]

My MkII Cortina was registered in the first week of May 1967 and was one of the early MkII 1300 Standard models. Apart from the gear lever, it had plastic seats and rubber floor mats but one of the best cold air to the face, warm air to the feet heating systems I've come across on a non-air conditioned car.

The vehicle had Michelin X tyres which were frankly awful. Whilst they were the first radials readily available in the UK and much feted by the manufacturers as offering extra grip (which was true whilst cornering) when combined with the rather sharp front disc brakes on the Cortina they could be lethal in the wet when stopping in a straight line, sliding abysmally. Drivers quickly learned to take the foot off well before a junction.

United Biscuits reps used to make between 12 and 15 calls a day so the clutches on the fleet averaged 10,000 miles - I managed 11,100 on the first one - and the driver's door hinges took a hammering, not something one would normally expect to fail but many did.

Mine had the misfortune of being hit by a reversing truck in Nelson in the autumn of 1967 whilst parked. There was damage to the rear offside pillar. The week after it was back on the road after repair it was parked (quite legally) in the same position. The same truck hit it again in the same place. The driver was a little embarrassed, especially as he was delivering biscuits for the rival Jacobs company.

After 9 months and 18,000 miles the car was changed for a brand new Escort - which had an extremely early manufacturers number. The sales force resented the downgrade in the type of car offered, the reduction to 1100 cc and the even more tacky interior, not to mention the poor heating and ventilation system. The remote gear lever didn't make up for any of the downgrading!!

[Ashtonian]

My first car!
Bought it from an acquaintance of my brother's who worked as a diesel fitter at Ashton Bus Depot on Mossley Rd. I think he sold it because there was this knocking sound everytime I went around Chester Sq. When I asked him about it he said it due to the McPherson struts.

After a few issues of Popular Motoring, reading the letters section, the problem came up and the solution was a £1 set of rubber bushings in the front stabilizer bar. No more knocking!

[mostonminer]

anyone remember those light blue invalid cars that used to be everywhere in the 70's,they had handlebars and wheelchair access from the rear...i think reliant made them from a modified regal but i could be wrong.

[Phil Blinkhorn]

It wasn't Reliant. The vehicles you remember were AC Invacars.

This link gives a comprehensive view:
invacar

[mr angry]

What about Bond Minicars? They had a motor bike engine driving the front wheel and you turned the engine along with the wheel when it was steered.

They also did the Equipe which was Triumph Herald based and the Bond 875 which was another 3 wheeler with a Hillman Imp engine

Were they anything to do with Bond who built bus bodies?

[Phil Blinkhorn]

I've never been able to link the two. The Bond factory was in Preston so there may have been some sort of family connection.

When I started driving, the Equipe was thought of as a desirable car, especially by a pal of mine who had a Bond 3 wheeler - which followed a Messerschmit 3 wheeler and an Innocenti (he had difficulty passing the 4 wheeler test!).

The day he passed his test he went to the local Triumph dealer in Stockport (Hollingdrake's if my memory isn't failing) and asked for a trade in price for his 3 wheeler against a new Equipe. He was insulted to be told that they only traded in cars, not three wheelers and their franchise was for the Equipe, not the Bond marque.