History of AWE
Automobile Works Eisenach (In German: Automobilwerkeisenach, or AWE for short) was a company situated in Eisenach, famed for Wartburg Castle, the haunch for Martin Luther. Heinrich Ehrhardt set up a company called FFE (FahrzeugFabrik Eisenach) in December 1896, in which he would begin small production of rifles, as well as a liscensed copy of a French car called the "Decauville" called the "Wartburg". The company was the third manufacturer to make cars in Germany. The Ehrhardts withdrew from the factory in 1903 due to financial issues with the Decauville. The factory then started to make cars known as "Dixi", underneath another management. The Dixi was popular in Germany as being highly reliable, if not slow. In 1928, BMW then buys FFE and rebrands the car, which now was a licensed Austin Seven, to the BMW Dixi, and the factory to BMW-Werke-Eisenach. In WW2 BMW produced motorcycles at throttled rate because of shortage of resources. After WW2 BMW fled from East Germany, from fears of becoming a public company and losing its profit, leaving behind a factory complex that was 60% destroyed by bombs. The area in which Eisenach was in was soviet territory. The factory kept producing BMW cars from prewar and BMW could not sue them with the Soviet Union backing the factory. All BMW's produced from 1945 to 1951 are all East German, since BMW's factory in Munich hadn't produced cars yet. In 1952, the factory was given to the German Democratic Republic and EMW was formed to negotiate with BMW. EMW entered in the 1953 German Grand Prix and they produced BMW's but the logo was red instead of blue. One year later (finally) AutomobilWerkEisenach (AWE) was picked for a final name and started to produce a car called the IFA F9 (which was a prototype of a car produced by DKW). After a couple of months training to build these cars, AWE were building plans and starting to prototype with Wartburg 311s (a new car based on the F9) when IFA and the East German government realised that they didn't have a saloon car in which they could give to academics, scientists, military generals, etc. The Wartburg 353 was made from 1960 to 1991 in between were minor facial changes done to try and make it more "modern". The Wartburg 353 was imported into Right-Hand drive countries such as Cyprus, England and Malta. It didn't sell well due to its horrible design compared to modern cars such as the VW Golf. They then "tried" to produce a car called the 1.1 to sell it to the west, some were sold but it was a last ditch effort and It failed miserably. |
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Specs of the Wartburg
The Wartburg 353 was the main car which was produced between 1968 and 1991, the exact time the berlin wall was up.
A interesting aspect is that the 353 could freewheel, which meant that the driver could change gears seamlessly without the clutch because whenever the accelerator was deactivated the gearbox would go out of gear, thus the clutch was not needed. Soundproofing which led to the engine vibrating against the body work in the coupe which itself was in turn extremely loud. This left very few Wartburgs equipped with Cassette players because you could not simply hear the stereo over the ear bleed noise of the engine. In total 356,330 Wartburg 353 Original were built 868,960 Wartburg Knight and Tourist were built. SpecificationsEngine:
993 cc Two stroke straight 3 (42 kW)[ Transmission4-speed manual (via column change) |
What Happened to it?When East and West reunited meant the end for AWE and their Wartburgs, as it could not compete with modern methods of production (Wartburgs had column change and coil suspension, from the 1940s) and the agency closed it in April 1991 AWE then saw what happened with the re-reunification and then knocked down 60% of the facility because of it. A number of the employees who were kicked out of AWE because of this found work in the newly created Opel factory across the road which opened a year later. While most of the factory has been demolished, one part has been preserved to house the Eisenach Car Museum. |
Location of the former Factory
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