Champion (automobile)
Encyclopedia
Champion Automobilwerke GmbH was a German producer of small cars, initially manufacturing in Paderborn
Paderborn
Paderborn is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader, which originates in more than 200 springs near Paderborn Cathedral, where St. Liborius is buried.-History:...

. The cars were produced and sold by a succession of businesses between 1952 and 1958. At the outset the cars were impressively simple and inexpensive, but as they became slightly less simple they also lost much of their price advantage. As larger manufacturers moved centre stage in the German auto-market, the producers of the Champion failed to achieve the volumes necessary to justify the investment needed to develop and produce the cars: the brief story of the marque is of a succession of financial crises and failures.

History

The car originally developed by ZF
ZF Friedrichshafen
ZF Friedrichshafen AG, also known as ZF Group, and commonly abbreviated to ZF, is a German public company headquartered in Friedrichshafen, in the south-west German region of Baden-Württemberg....

 of Friedrichshafen
Friedrichshafen
This article is about a German town. For the Danish town, see Frederikshavn, and for the Finnish town, see Fredrikshamn .Friedrichshafen is a university city on the northern side of Lake Constance in Southern Germany, near the borders with Switzerland and Austria.It is the district capital of the...

 was a two seater with a single-cylinder 200 cc rear-mounted two-stroke lawnmower engine supported by a supercharger
Supercharger
A supercharger is an air compressor used for forced induction of an internal combustion engine.The greater mass flow-rate provides more oxygen to support combustion than would be available in a naturally aspirated engine, which allows more fuel to be burned and more work to be done per cycle,...

. Power was delivered to the wheels via a three speed gear box: despite the low weight of the car, there was also a reverse gear. The first prototype was actually built further to the south at Herrlingen near Ulm
Ulm
Ulm is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at 120,000 , forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and...

 in 1948. The car was based around a central steel frame and employed a rear mounted engine, being clearly inspired by the Volkswagen lay-out, but smaller and simpler having regard to the availability of production facilities and materials in the late 1940s.

In 1949 a former BMW engineer then known for his work on early post-war racing cars and named Hermann Holbein acquired the production rights for the car. One year later, Holbein introduced the Champion, which would be assembled at the newly created Champion Automobilwerken plant in Paderborn until 1952. In 1952 production was taken over by the Ludwigshafen based "Rheinische Automobilfabrik Hennhöfer & Co" company. When this business went into liquidation a Dane named Henning Thorndahl took charge of assembling the vehicles until October 1954 when the last car was produced.

In 1955 production was taken over by Maico
Maico
For the manga series, see Maico 2010.Maicowerk A.G. was founded in 1926, originally assembling 98 and 123 cc Ilo two stroke motors. After World War II the West German motorcycle manufacturer began producing its own unit construction two stroke engines, selling engines and complete motorcycles...

, a firm then as subsequently better known for its motor cycles.

Champion 250

The Champion 250 built under Holbein’s direction featured a rear-mounted Triumph (Germany)
Triumph (TWN)
Triumph-Werke Nürnberg AG or TWN, was German bicycle and motorcycle company. In 1886, Siegfried Bettmann founded the Triumph bicycle factory in Coventry, England, and in 1896 he founded a second bicycle factory in his native Nuremberg, Germany, under the same Triumph name...

 single-cylinder engine of 250 cc producing a claimed 6 PS or a two-cylinder engine providing a stated 10 PS of output. Weights given for the car vary between 220 kg and 250 kg. It was just 285 cm (724 in) long and 136 cm (345 in) wide. The single-cylinder version was said to be capable of 60 km/h (37 mph) and the two-cylinder version of 70 km/h (44 mph).

The specification of the car was basic. The steel dish wheels were of a thinness commonly associated with basic motor-cycles and needed therefore to be pumped to a relatively high pressure. The hardness of the tires and the minimalist approach taken to shock absorption made the cars strikingly uncomfortable. Except for users of cabriolet versions with the roof open, above average agility was vital for anyone wishing to get in or out of a Champion. Driver fitness was also encouraged by the need to start the engine with a starting handle, there being no electric starter-motor.

The selling price was initially, DM 2,400 rising to DM 2,650 for the twin cylinder version: this compares with DM 5,300 then being asked for a Volkswagen Beetle. 225 or just under 400 of the cars were produced. Sources differ.

Champion 400 / 500

In 1951 the twin seater cabriolet-saloon Champion 400 was presented with a full width canvas roof reminiscent of the open topped Fiat Topolino
Fiat Topolino
The Fiat 500, commonly known as Topolino , is an Italian automobile model manufactured by Fiat from 1936 to 1955.-History:...

 though in other respects the overall architecture of the design remained closer to Wolfsburg
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...

 than to Turin
Fiat
FIAT, an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino , is an Italian automobile manufacturer, engine manufacturer, financial, and industrial group based in Turin in the Italian region of Piedmont. Fiat was founded in 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli...

. The steel bodied car was reported to be notably more solidly constructed and the suspension had gained both in sophistication and in terms of ride comfort. The weight of the car was now virtually doubled as against the original 250 model, to 520 kg, and road-holding on the corners became more challenging.

Power came from a with a two-cylinder 398 cc ILO engine. Output was now given as 14 PS, and the maximum speed increased to 80/85 km/h (50/53 mph). Between 1951 and 1952 around 2,000 were produced. However, the car no longer occupied the price niche of its predecessor, the price having increased by the start of 1951 to DM 4,300, which almost matched the price of the Volkswagen Beetle, which had itself recently undergone a substantial price reduction supported by increasing production and sales volumes.

After Champion production moved south from Paderborn
Paderborn
Paderborn is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader, which originates in more than 200 springs near Paderborn Cathedral, where St. Liborius is buried.-History:...

 to the Hennhöfer plant at Ludwigshafen the original Champion business collapsed. The Ludwigshafen Hennhöfer company which was by now assembling the cars on behalf of Champion nevertheless committed to persist in producing the cars. The engine was switched to a 16 PS Heinkel
Heinkel
Heinkel Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturing company founded by and named after Ernst Heinkel. It is noted for producing bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe in World War II and for important contributions to high-speed flight.-History:...

 unit, and the model name was changed from 400 to 400 H. Roughly a further 1,941 of the cars were built in Ludwigshafen on this basis before Hennhöfer, in its turn, collapsed in 1953.

The Danish entrepreneur Thorndahl struggled to revive the business in 1953/54. Under his watch 1953 saw the introduction of the Champion 500G, an estate version of the car with a steel-timber body and a 452 cc Heinkel 18 PS engine. However, only 20 of the 500G models were produced, and in total output under Thorndahl amounted only to 300 vehicles.

Maico MC 400

Maico was also based in the sout-west of Germany, at Ammerbruch-Pfäffingen
Ammerbuch
Ammerbuch is a municipality in the district of Tübingen, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated 7 km northwest of Tübingen.See Also: Entringen...

 near Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

: their purchase of the Champion assets was triggered by the low "liquidation" price at which they were available following the collapse of earlier producers of the car.

Following the Maico
Maico
For the manga series, see Maico 2010.Maicowerk A.G. was founded in 1926, originally assembling 98 and 123 cc Ilo two stroke motors. After World War II the West German motorcycle manufacturer began producing its own unit construction two stroke engines, selling engines and complete motorcycles...

 takeover the two seater car was rebranded as the Maico MC 400. A four seater version, the Maico MC 403, was also developed by Maico's Technical Chief, Ulrich Pohl, who till then had never had any involvement in auto-design. In order to accommodate the back seats the car was lengthened from 320 com to 340 cm and the weight increased to 585 kg. The two-cylinder 400 cc engines were motor-cooled gave a stated 15 PS of output.

1955 saw the appearance of the Maico 500 with the 452 cc Heinkel 18 PS engine. The car retailed for just DM 3,665, but it is not clear whether the reduced price resulted from reductions in production costs or from ever more heroic assumptions as to the volume sales over which fixed costs could be amortized. Bodies were by now being built by Bauer
Karosserie Baur
Baur is a Karosserie or coachbuilder in Stuttgart, Germany, which has been building BMW convertibles since the 1930s. Currently, they are the body and assembly works for IVM Automotive, a member the Ed Group...

 of Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

. 1957 saw further reworking of the chassis, but driving characteristics remained fussy: the competition had also moved on and the now aging design fell short of market expectations in terms of detailed finish and the high level of interior noise. Neither the two seater nor Pohl's extended four seater were strikingly beautiful.

By 1956 Maico had produced approximately a further 800 of the Champion designed cars including a further 21 of the 500G models, sold at a loss-leader price of just DM 4,050.

Shortly before automobile production came to an end, another sports coupe, the Maico 500 Sport Cabriolet, was shown to the public. Ten pre-production prototypes were built by Thun
Thun
Thun is a municipality in the administrative district of Thun in the canton of Bern in Switzerland with about 42,136 inhabitants , as of 1 January 2006....

 based coach-builder Beutler Brothers. There were hopes of finding financial salvation by selling the little cars in the USA. The hopes proved illusory, however, as the money ran out. Early in 1958 Maeco hastily pulled out of automobile production, narrowly avoiding bankruptcy, returning the focus of their business to motor-cycles.

By March 1958, Maico had produced about 5,000 or 7,100 of the Champion based Maico cars. Again, sources differ.

Sources and further reading

  • Hansjörg Dach: Champion - eine Legende. Eine Idee vor 50 Jahren. (= Zur Geschichte der ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Band 5) - Friedrichshafen: ZF Friedrichshafen AG, 1997.
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