Topic: Eigenbau of the month

[Wendax]

And the article again:

[fromwien]

The text of the advertisement (sorry, German) attached to this reply

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: November 2023

It may look like a boat on three wheels, but this month's Eigenbau is a wooden microcar from France. It was built around 1955 and is powered by a Flandria 50 cc motorcycle engine, like the one pictured below. You can see the kick starter at the left rear side of the car, and it looks like there is a rest of a handlebar beneath the steering wheel. The car is for sale right now at a price tag of 2,000 €.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: December 2023

Christmas time is coming, so how about a kit car project as a gift for long dark winter nights? I recently came across the sales ad for a fiberglass body made to fit on a VW chassis. It is of course unfinished as it can be, resting for several decades as a constant reminder of the dream car it was supposed to be. One interesting statement was contained in the description: there were two bodies made of this form and one of it made it to a complete car that was registered long ago. Curiosity aroused and I had a look at some old sales ads concerning homemade kitcars. I did not find a perfect match, but one from 1975 that was very close. You can see it at the bottom of this post. Let your imagination flow, add a rear window to the currently pictured body shell, forget about the extra vent in front of the rear wheels and the miniature Testarossa-like applications at the end of the driver's door. The result looks very much like the car built on the 1972 VW 1300 chassis. It might even be the completed car mentioned in the recent description. Will we ever know?

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: January 2024

Starting the new year where the old one ended we see a home-built sports car based on a German rear engined chassis. But there the similarities almost end. This time we have an open top Spyder rather than a coupe. Its body was made of steel, not of fiberglass, telling by the large rusted areas at the front. And it wasn't built on a VW platform either, but on the smaller but sportier NSU chassis. I don't know though whether it used the more powerful four-cylinder engine or the diminutive two-cylinder Prinz one. The styling seems to originate from the late sixties with its targa roof, if that ever existed as I can't see any means to fix it. Besides the NSU base and these pictures which appeared a few years ago in an online ad I don't know anything about this car.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: February 2024

We stay with last month's theme as we have a NSU-based Eigenbau again. This one used the two-cylinder NSU Prinz 4 chassis. In contrast to last month's car we have a fiberglass body this time, a coupe with gullwing doors. It seems the small sports car was never finished, like so many private projects. Despite the pictures which appeared on a well-known auction site some years ago I don't have any information about that little sports car.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: March 2024

No, this is not the new Mercedes-Benz MUV (micro utility vehicle  ), but the last one in this row of NSU-based Eigenbau cars. This little wannabe Jeep was built on a shortened chassis of a NSU Prinz 4. The rear engine made it look quite tail-heavy. I don't know whether it was supposed to be an offroad fun car or a child's car (perhaps with a limited top speed by blocking the top gears) or if it was even road legal. All in all it follows the same concept as the Trabant-based buggies featured here before: https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/features-stories-and-photos/eigenbau-of-the-month/msg536669/#msg536669.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: April 2024

Following the line of rear-engined Eigenbau cars of the 1970s (or so) we change the brand and have a look at a BMW. Its looks owe a bit to the Mini Moke. On a smaller scale we've had a BMW Isetta Jagdwagen as a puzzle before which shares the same basic idea (https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2011-39/solved-neh-1155-bmw-isetta-'jagdwagen'-1955/), just built one or two decades earlier. And another hunting buggy Eigenbau with some BMW connection was the Goggomobil Jagdwagen (https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2011-39/solved-wendax-155-lloyd-'goggomobil-jagdwagen'/).

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: May 2024

This month's Eigenbau is a car known to some of you and was a puzzle here before: https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/2012-41/lloyd-alexander-franz-kleevisch-1961
So why present it here again? Well, yesterday I had the pleasure to see this car in real life. I visited the Lloyd Days 2024 in Nienburg/Weser hosted by the Lloyd Freunde IG. Besides many Lloyd LP 400, LP 600, Alexander, Arabella and astonishing many LT 500 / 600 minivans there were two very interesting cars: an Arabella convertible perhaps built by Deutsch (featured in last month's Oldtimer Praxis magazine) and Franz Kleevisch's Lloyd Alexander Roadster. I didn't know the car still existed. It was driven by several owners until 1974 and then became part of a huge Borgward collection in Neuwied where it spent several decades. When the collection was dissolved, the current owner bought the roadster. It was one of the last four cars left in the collection. The car is in perfect condition again now. Enjoy the pictures!

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: June 2024

One of the most common base for Eigenbau cars of the 1950s was the VW Typ 82 Kübelwagen. There were many attempts to make it more weatherproof as well as convert it in a car or minivan, ranging from adding a rigid roof or woody body up to completely new constructions not telling its origin. Today we have one of those, a modern pontoon-style station wagon with four doors. A touch of luxury was added with a large chrome bumper. It was built in the Austrian federal state of Salzburg. Its lines remind me a bit of the contemporary AWS Elsbett-Wagen shown below. And a side note: VW never built a rear-engined four-door station wagon.

[pnegyesi]

This is beautiful (I know, my eyes need to be checked)

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: July 2024

Time is running fast, July is almost over and I haven't posted an Eigenbau yet. A quick pick from my archive brings into the spotlight another car from Austria. It is not a complete Eigenbau, but a modification of a common car. This month's showpiece is a four-cylinder Renault with a modernized front end. I'm not completely sure about the base car as the body was used for different models. My best guess would be a 1936-1938 Renault Celtaquatre. The front of the car differs completely by having fenders with incorporated headlights in a kind of Pierce-Arrow style  and of course by the seven thick chrome bars so en vogue in the early 1950's. The car was parked in front of the glass cutter workshop of Robert Haupt. In an old business calender I found online the adress of that company was given as Haager Straße 26 in Steyr, a place nowadays very closely connected to the automobile: today it is part of the BMW factory in Steyr.

PS. You can see a nice roadster in the background to the left.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: August 2024

The latest trend in coachbuilding after WW2 was the pontoon style. And this Eigenbau really was a fast follower of fashion: being built in 1950 it really deserves the description as a pontoon car. Most probably built on a VW Kübelwagen chassis it combines a bulbous body with a rather auxiliary fabric top and side curtains. The chrome (or aluminium) bars at the front succesfully pretend to be a radiator grille while the real air vents were sitting at the rear fenders. The car was registered at Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month June 2018: Builder's name added

[pnegyesi]

Eigenbau of the month June 2018: Builder's name added

Great, congratulations. Can you tell me more about the book?

[Wendax]

Yes, I think you had review on that book in a former R&UV issue. It is "Vom Krieg in den Frieden" by Alexander Diego Fritz. It is mainly about the VW Typ 82 ("Kübelwagen") with some attention on Kohlruss bodies and some private conversions.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: September 2024

Staying with the theme of modified military VWs, this month's Eigenbau is not based on a VW Typ 82 Kübelwagen, but a heavily modified VW Typ 166 Schwimmwagen.
The new owners surely had no interest in the amphibious capabilities of the base car. Doors were cut into the sides, fenders similar to those of the VW saloon were added and a windshield of unknown provenance was placed in front of the passengers. The convertible top didn't use the original bows either. But the top side line and the handle bar behind the driver are enough evidence to identify the base car. Judging by the clothing and the haircuts I'd say the picture was taken in the late 1950s or early 1960s, probably in Germany or Austria.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: October 2024

Besides the rebodied military or prewar cars featured in the last months another field of Eigenbau cars were the microcars giving a minimum transportation nourished by the wish to travel weather protected. Today's car should rather be called Voiture Artisanale instead of Eigenbau because we are heading to France. Our destination is beautiful Normandy, a little hamlet called Le Hazé near Flers. Here it was where Marcel Perrin (1924-2017) built a pedal-driven car in the 1950's with an auxiliary engine beneath the front hood. The looks of the car were certainly inspired by the American cars of its time, unreachable for a normal European citizen back then. The microcar was steered by its single rear wheel, so I guess the front axle was the driven one. The car has survived and is for sale right now.

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: November 2024

This month's set of photos was supplied by gte4289 who posted them initially in the "What is this car?" thread. He allowed me to feature them here. What do we see? A nice sports car built in the early 1950s according to its style and features. The body looks like it was made of aluminium and left unpainted. The front grille is obviously inspired by the one used on the early Veritas, the most famous German racing cars of that time. (See the front view on a Veritas RS at the very bottom of this post.) The full windscreen identifies it as a sports car rather than a racecar which would otherwise have had Brookland type aero screens like on the Veritas. The sideview reveals that there were probably no doors cut into the side panels which fits nicely with the sleek and low bodyline. The rear end just shows two small rear lights, a central brake light and a single reflector at the left lower end. This together with the semaphores instead of turning signal lights lead me to the estimated early 1950s for the time of construction. The license plate from Württemberg (FW = French-occupied Württemberg) in the southwest of Germany is a pre-1956 one. Which leads us to the text at the back of one of the photos, probably the side view with the young lady:
"Auf der Fahrt nach Köln entdeckt Elia (?) sein selbstgebautes Auto auf einem Auto-Platz. Kein Schrottplatz, sondern Sammler von alten Autotypen. 1956" (On a trip to Cologne Elia (?) discovers his self-built car on a car yard. Not a scrapyard, but a collector of old car types. 1956")
As always, if anyone knows more about this Eigenbau, please let us know.

[Trip]

FW 26 was Reutlingen.

[Wendax]

Thank you for that additional information. Just an idea: perhaps a bodywork privately built by an employee of Wendler. The bodywork surely looks as if it was made by a professional.

[Wendax]

Update on the Eigenbau of the month March 2017

Great news! The Eigenbau of the month March 2017 has survived and I know the base as well as the coachbuilder now. The chassis is a NSU/Fiat 1100 from 1940. The car was recovered as a barnfind after the German reunification in Görlitz in Eastern Saxony. The bodywork was done by a company called Fiedler. There still is a company called Fiedler in Neugersdorf near Görlitz, founded as a wheelright's shop in 1904 whose third owner was Siegfried Fiedler, a trained coachbuilder, who built car parts (doors, roofs, seats) as well as frames for caravans (https://www.firma-fiedler.de/Ueber-uns.html). So we can assume that this car was built there (as well as this one: https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/features-stories-and-photos/eigenbau-of-the-month/msg550078/#msg550078 ?). The car was part of a private collection so far and is up for sale now (€ 1300 for a challenging project  ).

Some recent pictures:

[Wendax]

And some pictures showing how it was presented in the private collection:

[Wendax]

Eigenbau of the month: December 2024

This year's last Eigenbau to be presented is actually an earlier version of a car featured here last year already, the Opel Robrahn (https://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/features-stories-and-photos/eigenbau-of-the-month/msg616518/#msg616518). Its looks initially were much more those of an early 1950's car. No rectangular Wartburg 353 headlights of course, no panoramic windscreen, a different roof, less massive front chrome and a divided chrome strip at the side which makes the car look like front and rear would not belong together. Is it the same car at all? Yes, the pictures of the two versions below reveal the same license plate and in the formerly quoted article it was mentioned that the car was altered several times.
I've added some information and the "manufacturer's plate" of the current car below.