Portfolio, Binders and Box For a Vehicle with a Fascinating History. The Baby Steyr Type 50.

Placed in our possession was a large pile consisting of vehicle documents, posters, magazines and photographs. From this we were to create order and semblance by creating an organised home for it all, with a ring binder file for the vehicles documents and an album for its restoration. For the posters and plans a leather scroll. 

This particular car, a 1936 'Baby' Steyr Type 50' was shipped over to England for an exhibition. For many years it was thought to be the predecessor to Volkswagen's Beetle and worked on by both Ferdinand Porsche and Hans Ludwinka. This however was not the case, but the car was known as the "Austrian Beetle" and offered better seating, luggage space as well as hydraulic brakes to VW's cable operated ones.

Another difference was Steyr's front mounted water cooled engine and shorter wheelbase and in total only 13'000 models were sold over 3 years compared to Volkswagens nearly 16 million Beetles over many decades.

Suffice to say the vehicle is rare and more so given that it was an early "show prototype". As far as we are aware the story goes that the onset of war put paid to any sales ambitions Daimler Puch had in the United Kingdom. The car was either sold or abandoned but resurfaced again being registered in Surry in the 1950's. It was then sold to a Devon farmer, where it lived in a barn until the late 1980's when a local garage owner rescued it and set about restoring it.

Restoration complete it lived in a barn (again!) and has now been inherited by the garage owners son, who as a mark of respect for his Father, wanted somewhere special to keep its history. While not the precursor to the Beetle it is still a very special motor vehicle.

More information about bespoke folders and boxes for motor vehicles can be found on this page here.