Topic: Eigenbau of the month

[grobmotorix]

I guess you might be right!

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: September 2018

Staying with the same base car as last month, this Eigenbau kept a little closer to the original. It is a nice attempt to update the looks of the Hanomag Kommissbrot. Going by the license plate which is prewar German (not clearly visible, IIA would be Munich) it was done in the late 1930s. The design was quite up to date then and except for the wings it even reminds me quite a lot of the postwar Champion 400, of which I attached a picture below. A nice detail on the Hanomag is the mascot, probably taken from an Adler bicycle.

[grobmotorix]

 

Outstanding...

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: October 2018

Not really an Eigenbau in the strict sense this time, rather an attempt to keep an old car going. But it needs a second look to identify the base car, as one characteristic detail has been changed. This month's Eigenbau looks like having a radiator up front, but in fact it is a rear-engined car. Did you find out what it once was? It is a second series Standard Superior from 1934/35, built by Wilhelm Gutbrod after a Josef Ganz design. The picture was taken between 1948 and 1954, when the Eastern part of Berlin had the GB license plate, GB = Groß-Berlin, before changing to the system kept until the end of the GDR. Below you can compare the shape of the door and the front wings to verify its origin.

[grobmotorix]

 

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: November 2018

Like in October this month's featured Eigenbau is just a modification of an older car. With lots of Volkswagen Typ 82 aka Kübelwagen having survived the Second World War, there was the wish to make them look more civilized when they were used privately. The range of solutions went from completely new bodywork (like https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2011-39/jc-visits-the-smurfs-solved-'hans'-ddr-eigenbau-from-1958-based-on-a-1944-kdf-ku) to slight alterations like fitting a solid roof, of which I attached two photos from Austria at the end of this post. The builder of the car we look at today preferred to give the Kübelwagen a more car-like appearance by changing the front and adding some running boards. There is some Fiat Topolino air around it, isn't it?

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: December 2018

Besides the VW chassis, I think the Dixi resp. BMW 3/15 PS chassis was the one used most often for homebuilt cars in Germany. This month I present to you a nice bodywork surely inspired by the Mille Miglia BMWs of the late 30s and - following similar lines - the Jaguar XK 120. This eigenbau surely looks much faster than it really was. The license plate tells us that the car was from East Berlin. Well designed it must have been a dream car in its time and place.

[grobmotorix]

Supercool...

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: January 2019

Something different to start the year with. This month's Eigenbau should rather be called a Voiture Artisanale. It is a Renault from the 1920s which was converted into a light farm truck, supposedly done in 1941. That happened somewhere in the Département Seine-Maritime in the north of the Normandy. The simple coachwork gives it a quite modern look, not unlike the Basic Transportation Vehicles of the 1970s, such as the Bedford Harimau.

[grobmotorix]

Really unique - thank you for sharing it!

[kwgibbs]

Very interesting,looking forward to more,Thanks.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: February 2019

This month I'd like to share some pictures of a car that turned up on coachbuild.com where its owner is looking for some information about it. This barnfind is based on a 1934 BMW 315/1 chassis. It was certainly rebodied in Germany after the war. While the front bears some similarities to the mid-1950's Autenrieth BMWs, the side view reveals that it was rather built in the early 1950s, as the flowing fenders were added to the pontoon shape of the body. It looks quite well finished, so it might not be an Eigenbau at all, but done by a professional coachbuilder. Or maybe it was someone's masterpiece: Think of all the nice bodies that came from the Kaiserslautern master school.

[Djetset]

Vielen Danke as always Wendax for another excellent (and unknown) monthly Eigenbau. This one nicely combines the 'formality' of a typical German front-end with the flourish and flair of an Italianate rear section, helped by using the Italian (early Fiat1400-1900 I think?) tail lights  .   

[Wendax]

Thank you, I was wondering where these tail lights originated from.

[pnegyesi]

It's not homemade, the owner now knows that it was done by Graber

[Wendax]

Good news! I'll leave it in this thread anyhow. If I had known the Graber origin before, it would have made a nice puzzle.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: March 2019

Last month's Eigenbau turned out to be a rather unknown creation by a known coachbuilder. I hope this month's Eigenbau is really home-grown despite its rather professional looks. When I saw this picture first, I thought of a Pobieda M-20 or perhaps its Polish equivalent, the Warszawa M-20. Then I noticed the three-piece windshield. As the Tatra 87 is one of my favourite cars, I was immediately excited what kind of bitsa this vehicle may be, a modified Tatra or was just the Tatra body put on another chassis? Upon closer look you can see that the huge rear engine lid is missing, but the small rear window (usually leaving the possibility to look through the engine bay and the louvers to what's behind the car) was kept. I would love to see what this car looked from behind: Does it have a notchback? Is there a trunk instead of the engine bay? Probably yes, because the car now has a front radiator opening and the letters above the grille look like AULT, so the Tatra body was perhaps mated with a Renault engine. I doubt that there will be any information about this car in any book or online. The license plate tells us that this car was located in Timișoara in Romania. Timișoara was the historical capital of the Banat region and until 1944 the majority of the population was German, followed by Hungarians. So maybe the Tatra was left behind when the German population fled resp. was deported after the war. There could be an interesting history around this car.

[pnegyesi]

They had plenty of cars like this in Romania. Here's a 1927 Citroen with a Wanderer front end and an Erskine engine!

[Wendax]

 

[Wendax]

Another picture:

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: April 2019

We have seen some Porsche 356 lookalikes from Eastern Germany here before:
- the widely known Lindner-Porsches (aka Miersch-Porsche) built by the Reimann brothers (https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2011-39/solved-neh-953-miersch-porsche-356),
- the Hallore built by Kurt Schröder (https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2015-44/solved-pj640-kurt-schroder's-hallore-1950s),
- a Porsche Eigenbau from Wurzen (https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2016-45/neh-4833/) and
- an Eigenbau of unknown origins (the blue one pictured here: https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2011-39/solved-neh-953-miersch-porsche-356/msg153680/#msg153680).
Now here is another one not mentioned anywhere so far. Its nickname was Mondfähre, the German word for lunar module and literally translated a moon ferry. Unlike the cars mentioned above, the Mondfähre was not based on a Volkswagen resp. KdF-Wagen chassis, but built around Skoda and Wartburg parts, according to the little poem that came alongside these pictures in an album. It translates a follows:
Children, children, I can tell you,
This was anything but a Volkswagen,
The Mondfähre was put together
From Skoda, Wartburg and Eigenbau,
and made a mighty noise while driving.
The license plate tells us that the car was from the Erfurt district in Thuringia. The rear lights came from a Wartburg.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: May 2019

While in April we had an Eigenbau with Porsche looks from East Germany, this month brings us one from Austria. And again, our wannabe Porsche is not based on VW mechanics, but was most probably built around a DKW chassis. At least that's what the front grill with its four rings implies, and there would be no need for a front air inlet for a rear-engined VW chassis. The car's number plate was issued in Vienna.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: June 2019

This month's car is somewhere between an individual rebuild and an Eigenbau. In 1964, a young man bought a wrecked Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia and restored it with some additions to make it look more stylish. A large front grill was added (and later modified) and some decent tailfins added some edgy contours. The frontal appearance has a bit of a Mercedes-Benz 190 SL. The car was registered in Essen. What amount of work must have been behind this task is obvious when you look at the photos of the wreck.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: July 2019

This time we have the rare case that the builder is known by name. Anyhow I decided not to make a puzzle out of it as I think that it is almost impossible to find. This little three-wheeler was built in 1951 by Willy Müller from Wiesbaden. In its principal design, three wheels on a tubular frame around a sidecar body, it follows a pattern we have seen before on the Juwel Flitzer by Alfred Jokisch: https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2014-43/solved-wendax-1199-juwel-flitzer-by-alfred-jokisch. I like the radiator grille similar to those on Veritas sports cars.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: August 2019

As I came across yet another picture of a car that is part of my first Enigma Variations puzzle, I decided to post all pictures of this car together in this thread. The car is a convertible registered in Eastern Germany in 1950. It was most probably built on a prewar chassis, my guess would be a Hansa 1100. The first registration plate (SN 55-1489) is from Saxony-Anhalt, as is the later one (KH 66-22) issued after 1953. In fact it is from the Gräfenhainichen district near Dessau. The first three pictures seem to have been made when the car was rather new. In the next pictures the car appears lighter, perhaps it was repainted sometime in between. Also a small red cross sign can be seen above the front bumper, so the owner might have been a medical doctor. In the last picures some fog lights have been added to the front. The design was really up to date in 1950 and the coachwork looks professionally made.