Coachbuild or Selfmade?

[sisiundlin]

Dear all,
I would like to encorage a thread on the question of selfmade and/or coachbuild which happened to arise for me based on my Baruth Special "coachbuild" post. In a last notice, HESA complained about the right to call a car like this a coachbuild.
I wrote as an answer:

thanks for the comments which are only partially true. Yes the car was on ebay for sale several times, and each time it was sold not without any interest by the community, but because people were willing to offer a price high enough to make a direct buy. I feel a bit offended by your answer, because I was the one, who bought the body after everything was removed. The previous owner sold it in bits and pieces and made presumably good money with the parts. I bought the fragments not for earning my living, but to safe a typical example of what people did after the war, not only in the DDR but everywhere to build up driveable cars (the floor was from 1942 and the body made around 1948-1950). And this was done sometimes in a very bad, and sometimes professional way. And the example here is a professional one. Unfortunately a lot of people don´t care about these types of cars. When you read the Rometsch company history you learn, that Rometsch survived after the war by transforming Horchs and Maybachs into Pick-Ups, so that people could transport the things they had. If you go through the museums througout Europe, you will find no example of these cars, but dozends of restored marvellous Horchs and Maybachs. A few years ago one example was found, and it was "restored" to its original glory, now being a normal Maybach, not distinguishable from others, but we have no example what people didi to survive after the war. From an automotive history view, this car is much more important, than another Kuebel with a marriage between a platform and a different body, and this is the reason why I bought it a few weeks ago, knowing, that the interesting parts in term of money have been sold by the previous owner, but the interesting parts in terms of automotive history are all there.
Some twenty years ago a book was published "Dies alles lief auf unseren Strassen" (All these cars drove on our roads), which featured a huge amount of selfmade and creative reuse of cars after the war. With +/- one exception, all of these cars in the book are gone!! So rather than judging that this car is of no interest (which is wrong) I would like to turn around the question: Why is another Kuebel in perfect condition more interesting than a Kuebelplatform under a professional made body from an KDF-VW and an Adler? We do have Kuebels en masse, but who has in his garage a selfmade creative body from the postwar era?
The car was not sold, but it happened to me the same, what the previous owner experienced: people are interested in the car to cut out the type 82 inner frame, throw everything away and use the frame. This is what I negotiate to do, I have either to do the restoration by myself or to give it to a museum, or a collector. This is the intention, not the uprise from a professional, but selfmade car (as I clearly stated) into a KDF.


My main question now is, does anybody keep a record, or a body, or a driving car comparable to this KDF-Adler marriage. Where have they gone, the one-off bodies of postwar tries to survive? Or do you all agree that they are not worth to be restored, should they be restored to another split, or another Kuebel with a wrong body on a wrong platform?
Alle the best sisiundlin

[merlin42]

Hi,
A fellow I spoke with a few years ago mentioned that even in the '60's a Kubel was going for the equivalent of $50.00, thus so many were used as parts to make other cars. Even Porsche early on was recycling Kubel parts into the early Pre-A models. Scrounging is an art form

Part of the problem you are running into is levels of interest in different types of cars. Many people are interested in Kubels because they are known, as well as some of the more popular coachbuilds. When you have a one-of-a kind vehicle it does not have a cult following and thus is viewed as just parts.

I have done little to my KDF "82E" because it is an example of what people did to keep cars running after the war. It was used, abused, totaled, rebuilt out of various cars etc.. I could always buy all the right sheetmetal for it, but I think that would detract from its history. The abuse has also messed with some of its WWII history, but I am accepting of that.

Hopefully you can find someone to take the coachbuilt you have. I respect your desire to preserve it as a piece of post-war German history.

-Merlin

[erioco]

sisiundlin,

I too feel that there is a gap in automotive history by not restoring some of these one off adaptations for use in situations as the end of a war. My cousin had a large collection of Mercedes cars, including two nurbergs?? large high-end limos. He found a third that had been turned into a truck with gas tanks under the truck bed for propane or some compressed gas. The vehicle was in very good shape and I told him he should put it back into a drivable truck to show what was done. He had two OG ones and now could have really interesting third as a truck. He was not interested.That was in 1969.
I have 2 of these one off cars: one from 1938 in France using a WWI Indian motorcycle engine in an open 2 seater (By a fellow called Fuilla, my car is the last of 5 different cars he built, all based on motorcycle engines. Mine is Type A number 1 {and that is the vin number of the car - importing that was not easy!} I met his daughter and got a lot of info on him) It is a very late example of what the french called Cylecars
The second is a home built three wheeler that I built with a friend in 1970 while I was waiting to go on active duty in the army. I wanted a Morgan but couldn't afford one. I still have it and it is now an antique car!!
I learned that building a car is not as easy as it looks.

NB do you have more info on the book you cited? I couldn't find it in German Amazon.com. Who is the author and do you have the actual date and ISBN number? If so pls send me the info.

There is also a book from France about interesting and strange one off cars of all types, from about 1970, I will look it up, I have just moved and am still unpacking my books.

Eric
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Radclyffe Roadster Replica proj based on an April 47 chassis

[Jack_vdBerg]

actually a very interesting and very valid point - definitely there should be some sort of dedicatedness to want to preserve vehicles like that. not only will they help fill in the gaps, but also see how people used to adapt to survive...

for me a good example would be a holzbrenner (or however you spell it) - or coal fired ww2 vehicle... that is adaptation
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Screw Conventional!!....I don't do conventional....see my 411 ideas in the 411/412 forums....He he he he...

[sisiundlin]

[Joerg Fischer]

Hallo,

das Problem ist, daß wohl kaum jemand (bis auf ein paar wirkliche Spezialisten) in der Lage sein wird, das Vehikel angemessen zu restaurieren bzw. wieder aufzubauen - eine Erfahrung, die ihr wohl auch gemacht habt.

Selbst wenn das gelingt, gibt es bei vielen von uns doch eine Art "ästhetischen Anspruch". Daran scheitern selbst heutzutage noch Eigenkreationen auf VW-Fahrgestell in deutlich besserem, manchmal sogar fahrfähigem (oder zumindest rollbaren) Zustand, die doch immer wieder mal auftauchen.

Was also tun? Behalten? Einmotten? Verschenken? Oder die wirtschaftlichen Interessen in den Vordergrund stellen und weiter zerpflücken?

Ich weiß es nicht. Viel Erfolg und viele Grüße

Jörg