Once the world’s largest producer of motorcycles, DKW (Dampf-Kraft-Wagen), based in Zschopau in Eastern Germany, didn’t fare so well in the Second World War. Apart from being nearly obliterated by allied bombing, its brilliantly simple RT 125 was snaffled as war reparations to appear as the BSA Bantam, Harley-Davidson Hummer and several others, including vague Japanese knock offs.
Prior to this, in 1932, DKW had become part of Auto Union as part of an economic reorganisation brought about by the Great Depression, an amalgamation of the Audi, Wanderer, Horch and DKW itself, which was by this stage making small cars as well as motorcycles. Throughout the 1930s, DKW developed supercharged two stroke racers that produced prodigious horsepower and made an unholy racket, and won the Isle of Man TT among…