CarBrandLogos archive · DAF · 1958

DAFDAF 600

The first car to make a continuously variable transmission actually work.

Photo: The original uploader was Buttonfreak at Dutch Wikipedia. (Original text: Arie · CC BY 2.5 nl

The story

A defining chapter in DAF history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the DAF 600, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

DAF built trucks and trailers in Eindhoven, and when Hub van Doorne decided to add a passenger car in the 1950s he had no interest in copying anyone. The 600 that emerged was a small, upright saloon with a 590 cc air-cooled twin and a transmission unlike anything else on sale: the Variomatic, a pair of rubber belts running on expanding pulleys, controlled by centrifugal weights and engine vacuum.

DAF img 2284 · Rama · CC BY-SA 2.0 fr

Design and engineering

There was no clutch pedal and no gear lever — only forward and reverse, and reverse gave the same ratios as forward, which produced the enduring party trick of a DAF that could do its top speed backwards. Because each rear wheel had its own belt, the system also acted as a limited-slip differential. Johan van der Brugghen led the engineering, and the car went on sale as the cheapest way in the Netherlands to drive without changing gear.

DAF img 2286 · Rama · CC BY-SA 2.0 fr

NL-Ha NA 2.24.01.04 0 910-2387 Huub van Doorne

In production

It sold to older drivers, to people who had never learned to use a clutch, and to anyone who valued simplicity, and just over thirty thousand were built before the larger 750 replaced it. The wider story is bigger than the car. DAF's belt-drive principle passed to Volvo when it bought the car division, and the Van Doorne transmission business went on to develop the steel push-belt that made the modern CVT viable in millions of cars worldwide.

NL-Ha NA 2.24.01.04 0 910-2387 Huub van Doorne · Joop van Bilsen for Anefo · CC BY 4.0

At a glance