Historic Car Brands
Stoewer
Stoewer was the third German manufacturer to produce automobiles, following Daimler and Benz. The first Stoewer, in-house produced, four-seat car was launched in 1899.
Bernhard Stoewer Senior had founded his original business in the centre of Stettin, Germany, (now Szczecin, Poland) in 1858, manufacturing domestic sewing machines and by the time of its 50th anniversary in 1908 was producing 70,000 per year. (At the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879, Stoewer was awarded a medal for ‘excellence in sewing machines’.)
Production of sewing machines continued until February 1931, during the Great Depression. Total production at this time was 1,868,500. In 1893 he expanded his business to include the manufacture of bicycles: an event that no doubt influenced the thinking of his two sons.
Emil and Bernhard soon became very competitive tandem cyclists, riding products of their father’s manufacture. Bicycle production continued until 1931, with 310,000 being made. In 1903 Bernhard Senior added typewriters to his company’s inventory and produced 134,600 of them.
Szcecin Museum
In 1896, Bernhard expanded his manufacturing facilities with the construction of an ironworks on the edge of Stettin. He was grooming his two sons Emil (1873 – 1942) and Bernhard (1875 – 1937) for managerial positions in this facility, with Emil in charge of bicycle production.
However, the sons dreamed of producing motorcars and began their research and development.
As a first step they produced motor tricycles, fitting De Dion engines to frames of their own design. In 1899 they produced their first, fully in-house constructed motorcar with an internal combustion engine and seating for four people.
The first car, with the Stoewer brothers on board – Stoewer Car Museum
This car was the Großer Stoewer Motorwagen four-seater, powered by a 2.1-litre, 6.5hp (4.8kW) two-cylinder, underfloor, rear-mounted engine, with chain drive.
Originally the car had a top speed of 14km/h, because engine speed was limited to 400rpm by a carburettor that was not able to adjust the fuel/air mixture to suit changing engine speeds. This problem was soon overcome and the vehicle achieved a top speed of 40km/h.
In parallel with the development of a motorcar with internal combustion engine, the Stoewer brothers recognised the potential and advantages in some applications of battery-powered electric cars. Also in 1899, they produced their first electric car, with a range of 150km aided by regenerative braking. (Now billed as ‘one pedal driving’, Stoewer invented this system more than 100 years ago, but employed a lever to activate it.)
Electric vehicle production was the primary source of revenue during the next five years, but was then phased out.
Later in 1899, in recognition of his son’s progress in developing motor cars, Bernhard Senior handed over the ironworks to his two sons and renamed the company: ‘Gebrüder Stoewer, Fabrik für Motorfahrzeuge’.
Progress in model design was rapid and in their first ten years they produced 30 different models of motorcars, trucks and buses.
Stoewer T-head engine – induction side
From 1902, these used crossflow, T-head engines of identical design to those used by Daimler in its Mercedes. This engine was not designed by Wilhelm Maybach, as is still claimed by Daimler/Benz today, but was designed by a Russian Jew named Boris Loutzkoy, who shared his licence with Stoewer.
Stoewer P4 1905-1910 – Osterreichische Fahrrad und Automobil Zeitung
The Stoewer 1902 models powered by Loutzkoy engines were the 1.5-litre, 10bhp, two-cylinder model P1 and the three-litre, 20 bhp, four-cylinder model P4. In 1906 these were followed by a big-bore, 60bhp, P6, 8.8-litre six-cylinder model This was the first six-cylinder motorcar in Germany. The P6 could achieve 100km/h – in 1906!
Stoewer P6 – Osterreichische Fahrrad und Automobil Zeitung
Stoewer’s prestige received a huge boost when Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered a Stoewer P6 and another endorsement was a London order for 200 double-decker buses. Soon after, the Kaiser ordered another two P6 cars but these were to be of longer wheelbase, designed to carry 10 people.
The six-cylinder engine’s crankshaft had four main bearings and there were two spark plugs per cylinder. These big-capacity P6 models had shaft drive and were aimed at the luxury end of the market.
In 1908, Stoewer released the lower cost G4 for the medium sector of the car market, and this model became the most successful Stoewer to date, with some 1070 cars built.
Stoewer subsidy truck L4 III 1909-1912
From 1909, Stoewer joined several major German car makers in standardising their four-cylinder truck models to suit future military purposes. Certain government-mandated design requirements needed to be met for these vehicles to attract subsidies.
Production and private sale of these so-called ‘subsidy’ trucks were encouraged by government payouts, with the aim of having a vehicle pool that could be conscripted for any future war purposes.
From 1910, some Stoewer cars were built under licence in France, by Mathis of Strasbourg. The first of these was a special model built for the Prinz Heinrich Fahrt event of 1910. Stoewer entered four of these cars and Mathis entered another four badged as Mathis. Under their bonnets was a high performance, 2.8-litre engine with four valves per cylinder and an overhead camshaft. Output of 50bhp represented 18bhp per litre: a figure higher than any other car in the event.
However, despite Stoewer and Mathis cars having this high specific engine output, the event was won by Ferdinand Porsche, driving an Astro Daimler of his own design, with an engine displacement nearly twice the size of that of the Stoewer’s.
In 1911, Stoewer’s 1.5-litre model B1 and 2.2-litre model B2 were also licensed to be rebadged ‘Mathis’.
In 1911 came the more modestly specified Stoewer B4 replacement for the P6. It was available with either a 4.9-litre side-valve four, developing 45bhp, or as a B4a, with a 4.1-litre Knight sleeve-valve engine, built by Daimler in Coventry.
All Stoewer cars featured innovative, quality engineering that included the use of high-quality aluminium-alloy castings, four-speed transmissions, multi-plate clutches and fully pressurised lubrication.
In contrast to the more sensible four-cylinder B and C models of the pre-WWI period came the 1913 F4 ‘Grosser Stoewer’ that was also the brainchild of Russian emigrant engineer Boris Loutzkoy.
Boris had developed the Prince Henry engine as a predecessor to much larger four-cylinder and six-cylinder aeroplane engines for Stoewer. Loutzkoy reckoned that this 100bhp, 8.6-litre OHC four, with hemispherical combustion chambers, was ideal for a Stoewer high-performance car. It was! This was the most advanced motorcar of the time, preceding the Grand Prix Mercedes of 1914, which developed 115 bhp.
This fascination with utilising aircraft engines in cars appeared again in the very limited production, post-War D7 that was propelled by a whopping 11,160cc, six-cylinder, aeroplane engine, from which Stoewer managed to raise the output from 120 bhp to 180 bhp
During the Great War, Stoewer motorcar manufacturing was wound down. Truck production continued and was supplemented by the manufacture of aircraft engines under licence to Loutzkoy’s Berlin company, Argus.
Post-war crises
The company had became an Aktiengesellschaft (limited company) in 1916 and was named Stoewer-Werke AG vormals Gebrüder Stoewer, with Emil as sales director and Bernhard as technical director.
Stoewer Car Museum
In pre-WWI Germany, Stoewer had relatively high retail pricing that kept production numbers low, but in the post-War economic situation, Stoewer found marketing very difficult. However, for the 1920s, a new class of cars was introduced: the D-Types included D3, D9 and D10 with four-cylinder engines, as well as D5, D6 and D12 with six cylinders.
In what became a pivotal change, Bernhard Stoewer Junior was forced by health issues to cease working in 1921, leaving his brother in charge, with Fritz Fiedler as chief engineer. The D-Type models continued to sell in moderate numbers, but grander plans were being drawn up.
1923 Stoewer DA – Stoewer Car Museum
In what turned out to be a classic piece of poor timing, in 1928, Stoewer released a range of beautifully made, modern, up-market models, powered by straight-eight engines, whose displacements went from two litres to five litres, with outputs ranging from 45bhp to 100bhp.
Their final, opulent 1930s models were known as G15 Gigant, M12 Marschall and P20 Repräsentant. The latter was said to be good for 120-130km/h.
Stoewer Gigant 80 Sport Phaeton – 4sitzig
However, early-1930s economic hardship for Germany was a double-whammy of the lingering after-effects of the 1923 hyper-inflation crisis, plus the rapidly developing Great Depression. It was clearly not the right time for selling top-shelf eight-cylinder cars, so production ceased after some 2500 cars had been produced.
The poorly timed straight-eight exercise had cost Stoewer almost everything and it had to seek financial support from the City of Stettin and the State of Pomerania, in 1931.
A bright note was the return of Berhnard Stoewer junior, who orchestrated a complete about-face in the Stoewer range. In place of opulent rear-wheel drive classics, aimed at the few remaining wealthy buyers, came an affordable front-wheel-drive car.
Stoewer V5 – Kapitel
At the 1931 Berlin Motor Show, Stoewer displayed a compact V5 model. Beneath its compact and conventional exterior the V5 hid then-radical front-wheel-drive, all-around independent suspension and 25bhp, 1.2-litre V4 engine.
The V4 configuration was chosen for its short length, allowing space under-bonnet for a firewall-mounted fuel tank, forward-mounted three-speed transmission and radiator. Two-door saloon and convertible sports models were produced and the V5S sports model scored a performance upgrade by way of a 30bhp engine version.
Stoewer V5 – Kapitel
The V4 engine layout may have suited packaging, but it was rough-running and was replaced after its second year of production and some 2100 sales by the R140 and R150 models that had in-line 1.4-litre and 1.5-litre four-cylinder engines, respectively.
The success of the front-wheel-drive models persuaded Stoewer to produce the higher-performance, up-market Greif model in 1934. This car was powered by a 2.5 litre, aluminium V8 that produced a respectable 55bhp.
1934 Stoewer Greif V8 FWD – Tampa Bay Automobile Museum
Stoewer’s future direction seemed assured: a range of front-wheel-drive vehicles, from basic transport up to luxury machines. However, at this point, politics intervened.
In March 1933, the Reichstag had passed the Enabling Act, a law that gave Adolf Hitler the power to enact legislation without parliamentary consent. Part of that legislation was a financing scheme involving ‘Mefo’ bills that was a Nazi-run Ponzi scheme. The sale of these bills financed much of Germany’s military buildup, but the bills matured in 1939, thus setting the date by which time Germany would need war-plunder to honour its bill debts.
That deadline hastened Hitler’s need to mechanise Germany for the war effort and Stoewer was an important cog in that wheel. However, its front-wheel-drive vehicles were judged inappropriate for military use.
Nazi takeover
In 1933, Emil Stoewer was replaced as the financial CEO of the company by a Nazi official and Bernhard Junior, who had become committed to front-wheel-drive, resigned in 1934. Thus ended the family-lineage Stoewer company, although the factory continued production right through the war years.
1935 Stoewer R180 FWD – Classic Car Trader
By 1935, Stoewer was still producing the Grief V8 and R150 and R180 (1.8-litre) models, but sales were poor and the company was in financial trouble once more. The Nazis proposed a merger between Stoewer and Ford of Cologne that was suffering sales decline, because of anti-West propaganda.
A delegation visited Ford’s HQ in Dearborn, USA, but Ford’s investigation of Stoewer’s financial position revealed deliberate ‘cooking’ of the books and the merger didn’t proceed.
In the meantime, German carmaker Röhr AG, which had a manufacturing licence to produce the Czech Tatra T75 model, had gone bankrupt. Stoewer was able to acquire the license that Röhr had held.
Tatra was years ahead of its time, in featuring a tubular backbone chassis and all-independent suspension. (That chassis design continued well into the 21st century, in Tatra heavy trucks.)
Tatra Museum
Ironically, it was this Tatra-designed, Stoewer Greif Junior that proved to be biggest-selling Stoewer model, with around 4000 cars being produced. The car had a front-mounted 1688cc, air-cooled, OHV boxer engine that produced 30bhp, coupled to a four-speed gearbox, giving the little car a top speed of 90km/h.
1937 Stoewer Greif Junior Kabriolett-Limousine – Haeferi
Around the same time, Stoewer won the design contract for a ‘uniform light off-road car’ (leichter geländegängiger Einheits-PKW) for the German Army.
The Stoewer R200 design featured not only four-wheel-drive and all-independent suspension, but four-wheel steering as well, giving it exceptional manoeuvrability. Power came from a two-litre, OHV four-cylinder petrol engine.
However, the complex steering system proved to require higher maintenance levels than expected, so post-1940 models had front-end steering only.
Because of the volumes required by the Wehrmacht, the Stoewer design was also produced by BMW-Factory Eisenach, as the BMW 325 and by Hanomag in Hanover as the Type 20 B. Stoewer produced around 2000 of the total 13,000. (The US Army Jeep’s production was similarly shared by Willys and Ford, using a design that originated at American Bantam.)
The lucrative military contract and the market success of the Greif Junior helped get Stoewer back on its corporate feet once more, so it released two larger, conventional cars. The 2.4-litre, 55bhp four-cylinder Sedina and 3.6-litre, 80bhp six-cylinder Arkona, were added in 1937. Around 1000 of these cars were sold before the outbreak of WWII.
Hitler and Goebbels inspecting a Stoewer Arkona
Stoewer produced engines and vehicles for the German war machine: aircraft engines; the Panzerkampfwagen 1 light tank; Flakpanzers, the R180 sedan and R200 4×4s, and NSU Kettenrad half-track motorbikes.
Although Stettin’s ship-building facilities were repeatedly targeted by Allied bombing raids, the Stoewer engineering factory was spared, as evidenced by RAF post-raid photography. The Russians confiscated anything useful, including the first Stoewer car from 1899 that subsequently went on museum display in Moscow. After the war, Stettin became part of Poland and was renamed Szczecin.
Fittingly, the Stoewer brand outlived the Nazis. The Stoewer brothers would have enjoyed the sight of US President, Harry Truman, standing and reviewing his victorious troops – from a Stoewer Arkona soft-top!
President Truman, standing in a Stoewer Arkona soft-top, inspects units of the 3rd Armored Division of the US Army near Frankfurt – Autobusy
Many Stoewer vehicles have been preserved around the world, including Down Under, where the Stoewer Car Museum, in Tawonga, Victoria, hosts some significant models. Check it out in our Car Features section.
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