Topic: Solved: Wendax 1700 - Butenuth Dampfauto

[Tom_I]

I think you could be right there. 

[Bill Murray]

He is right, but I was just waiting for Gerd to verify it .

[Wendax]

Yes, Butenuth Dampfauto is correct. Contrary to the English car, the German Auto can be applied to trucks too.

[4popoid]

Thanks for the point Gerd, although I suggest that you award a point to Bill as well.  He got the Ford V3000S identification, and without that information I doubt that I would have come up with Butenuth, as the key sentence I found was: "1937 taught Butenuth in Berlin a representative for Ford and upgraded during the war years Ford trucks over to steam operation."

[Bill Murray]

I am not sure if anyone else is going to carry on with this one but I have hours of research in it so I will give it a go.

Hellmuth Butenuth was an engineer, eventually hired by Hanomag and involved in their development of a small car. He was active in some racing activities with the car and eventually was awarded the Hanomag franchise for Berlin/Brandenberg.

There is little information that I could find after that until 1945.

He then, was involved in the development of steam engines.  Again, the information I found was very fragmented but I will try.

Apparently, 4 Ford vehicles were converted to steam, using a coke/coal fired primary engine, presumably a Ford.  The steam engine was said to be a two stroke 4 cylinder boxer motor.

It seems an A. Simon was the primary developer of the concept and I have no further information yet on him.  It also seems the vehicles were built 1945-1949 or 1946-1952, depending on the source, by the company Lenz and Butenuth.  There is also a brief reference to the "Berlin Steam Engines Society" but I could find no information on that organization.

I gather the steam engined Fords were not successful and only 4 were produced.

Around 1948, he started the company Econom to produce trucks but could not compete with larger firms and closed that company in ca. 1954.

Shortly after that, he was awarded a Ford dealership franchise in Berlin/Spandau.  I think it still operates under that name although Butenuth passed away in 1990.

Below is the only other photo I found, all 3 seeming to come from all sorts of ebay type sources, and I suspect all 3 photos are of the same truck.

If anyone has more information and/or photos, I personally would appreciate it if it could be posted here.  A most interesting and very small part of automotive history.

[Wendax]

Some more details to the facts gathered by Bill:
Hellmuth Butenuth was born in 1898. During his studies at the Technische Hochschule Hannover he developed a tandem-seater threewheeler which was marketed in 1922/23 as the Bufag. After he finishec his university studies he was employed by Hanomag, where he did some refinements on the 2/10 PS (http://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/index.php?topic=1870), of which he drove several racing versions (http://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/index.php?topic=19885.msg204702#msg204702 and http://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/index.php?topic=20505). He did the construction work for the 3/16 PS, and was part of the construction team for the Garant, Rekord and Sturm. Shortly before WW2 he left Hanomag, took over the Hanomag franchise for Berlin and Brandenburg, bought the coachbuilder Papler and finally changed his Hanomag dealership for the main Ford dealership in Berlin which he kept for the rest of his life.
His steam-engined Ford used many engine parts of the gasoline engine. It was to be built and sold by the Berliner Dampfmotorengesellschaft (BDG). But all equipment and constructions were finally confiscated by the Russians around 1947, to be carried to Leningrad. In 1949 Butenuth founded the Econom company which produced cca. 1000 municipal trucks (http://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/index.php?topic=26468) until the mid-fifties. He also constructed the Econom Teddy microcar (#1 in http://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/index.php?topic=5589.0).