Topic: Selve 6x6 Geländewagen, 1928

[ValkyrieGT]

Steyr staff car, pre-war.

[mekubb]

Found it finally : Selve 6x6 from 1928

[grobmotorix]

Your point!

[Bill Murray]

Not to steal anyone's answer here, but there is a fuller answer.

The vehicle is a Selve-Voran M of the year 1928.
Apparently a small batch was made to explore any possibilities in the civilian and military markets.
The Reichswehr official designation was "Car Heavy 6X6 Kfz21 Selve-Voran M".  They did not accept the car and it made no headway on the civilian market either.

Information is a bit sketchy, but I gather that Selve did the motor/body and perhaps the rear part of the drive train and Voran did the driven/steerable front axle part. That was their specialty from what I have read.

Here is a rear view of the vehicle.

Bill

[Wendax]

The Selve Typ M was developed in 1926 by Richard Bussien, the founder of Voran.

[Bill Murray]

Hi Guys:

I do not feel confident enough or competent enough to try to pin down an exact date for this one (1926 or 1928) but here is what my research came up with so far.

I found four sites on the web dealing with this car.  Three identified it as a 1928 model, one, a Russian site, identified it as a 1926 model.  On a couple of the sites, there is a very brief discussion of  Bussien/Voran working from 1926 to 1928 or 1929 on a 6x6 cross country vehicle together with Selve.

The car also appears in two books in my library dealing with the history of military vehicles.  Both authors are well recognized authorities and I actually collaborated with both of them in the 1960's and 1970's.  One author identified it as a 1928 model and the other discussed, in German which I do not read well, the same development story and was a bit ambiguous about the actual year of the photos of the car in his book.

These sites/books were in English, French, German and Russian languages and I have to rely on Google translate to try to piece together the story so I could be wrong, I could be right and I may never really know.

At least we know what it was, anyway.

BTW, I wonder if the M stands for Militär?

Bill

[grobmotorix]

I have found this one in an 1928 austrian magazine.

They´ve mentioned Voran patents, there was no model name and it looks like a presentation of a new car:

[Bill Murray]

Thanks for that post, Burkhard!

Now, however, I have found in another book in my library on German military vehicles which was also written by a well known and respected German author and he describes this vehicle as a prototype from 1926.

I have not found anything further on Google and I suspect that in order to come up with a more positive date that someone in Germany will have to try to find some sort of corporate archives or corporate histories of both companies to use as "original" source documentation.

Or, we just say it was one of a very few such vehicles made in the 1926-1928 period...............

I will continue to look just because I get stubborn sometimes

Bill

[Wendax]

There were three cars of similar six-wheel layout, the Selve Typ M, the Mercedes-Benz G1 and the Horch 8 Geländewagen. All were built according to the requirements of a Reichswehr competition and all were built (and tested) in the time span from 1926 to 1928. The Selve was developed by Voran's Richard Bussien and Selve's Karl Slevogt who already left the company in 1927.

[ValkyrieGT]

It was an innovative vehicle, wonder why it did not have more popularity.

[Bill Murray]

Gerd is quite correct about the project on the part of the Reichswehr to develop a heavy cross country personnel carrier.

To answer your question, ValkyrieGT...........

The cars were too expensive.
The cars were far too complicated.
The cars were far too heavy for their intended role.
The cars performed well in carefully controlled testing ground environments but poorly in "real world" driving conditions.
The cars were extremely demanding in the area of routine maintenance.  They also required a high level of expertise to perform not only routine maintenance but also any repairs.  Such repairs were beyond the capability of the normal driver/mechanic combination that was the norm at the time.

Not a subject for this thread or maybe even for this Forum, but the Reichswehr as well as the Wehrmacht  embarked on a large number of similar projects to develop the "ultimate" cross country vehicle from small 4 passenger personnel carriers to fairly large trucks.  An interesting story but perhaps not for this Forum.

BTW ValkyrieGT, your possible other choices were on the mark as well.  Austrian, Czech and even British firms also experimented with very complicated cross country cars and trucks from the mid 1920's to the late 1930's.

Few passed the test.

Bill

[grobmotorix]

This military vehicle topic would make a perfect new thread...