Out now: the Autocade Yearbook 2024
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DAF
Out now: Autocade Yearbook 2024

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Hub van Doorne co-founded a a construction workshop in 1928 (with the other co-founder A. H. Huenges financing the business), diversifying into trailers, renaming the business van Doorne’s Aanhangwagenfabriek (DAF) in 1932. Huenges left in 1936, leaving the business in the hands of Hub and his brother Wim. After World War II, it branched out into trucks and buses, and was renamed van Doorne’s Automobielfabriek (vehicle factory), keeping the same initials. Hub developed and applied the continuously variable transmission (CVT) and although DAF did not pioneer its use in a car (Clyno had it in 1923), it did popularize it from the 1950s through to the 1980s, after which other manufacturers began offering it in smaller models. It was the success of DAF’s demonstration of CVT in a small car application in 1958, where 4,000 orders were taken, that led it to mass-produce the model, the DAF 600, the following year. Subsequent models followed a similar format: a small size, rear-wheel-drive, with CVT as the sole transmission. The passenger car division was sold to Volvo in 1975, with the Swedish company retiring the marque, and inheriting the DAF 77 proposal, which became the Volvo 343.


 

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Out now: Autocade Yearbook 2024