If I said “Michelotti-designed RWD two-door four-seater, automatic transmission and De Dion rear axle,” there’s a fair chance you’d answer something like Gordon-Keeble or Iso Rivolta. And you’d be right. But here we have another vehicle that also fits that description, and it sure isn’t V8-powered.
The DAF 46 was the last new model launched by the Dutch firm in November 1974, just as they were being taken over by Volvo. The 46 superseded both the 850cc DAF 44 and the 750cc DAF 33, the latter being a direct descendant of the early ‘60s Daffodil. The French say that cooking is the art of rearranging leftovers. If that’s true, then this is Dutch cuisine at its finest, straight from the oven. The DAF 46 combined the DAF 44’s body and air-cooled 850cc twin with the bigger DAF 66’s new rear suspension, introduced in 1972.
Source: Wikicommons
The DAF 46 used the firm’s famous Variomatic CVT, of course. But unlike the other DAFs, this one made do with just one drive belt. This saved space and weight, but it also robbed the transmission of its redundancy: if that solitary transmission belt were to break or come loose, the DAF 46 would turn into a 750kg paperweight. On the plus side, the De Dion behaved much better than the previous models’ swing axle.
The DAF twin’s 34 hp were sufficient enough to get it going in its flat native land, but I caught this one in Savoy, not too far from Switzerland. Slap-bang in the Alps, in other words. Not exactly DAF country. And this particular car is registered in the Pyrenées-Atlantiques, near Spain – way over on the other side of France, where it’s definitely not flat either. It’s not like Michelotti went for a very slippery shape, so even when coming down from the mountains, the DAF 46 is not known for being very alert. On the transmission front, it is unclear to me whether the Variomatic provides any engine breaking whatsoever. There is no “low” setting on the floor-mounted gear lever – just forwards, backwards and neutral. The clogs brakes are drums all around, of course.
At least, it seems like a nice place to sit and enjoy the view. The boxy shape of the car gives passengers plenty of headroom and the interior appointments seem to be well laid-out and put together. I have no first-hand experience of DAF vehicles, so I’m curious as to these seats. Are we talking hard and supportive in the German sense, or fluffy French-style sofa? Our resident Batavian contributor Johannes – or anyone else who ever sat in one of these – may have an answer to that one.
The DAF 46 naturally inherited the 44’s body variants. If the saloon seemed unsuited to your (modest) hauling needs, you could fork out a few extra Guilder for the Combi. Much as I like the saloon’s three-box shape, that wagon seems like a better idea – the Variomatic / RWD set-up (and the gas tank) takes up a bit of space underneath the car, making for a somewhat shallower trunk than one might expect.
If you want your Focus to look like a Benz, park it next to a DAF.
It seems DAF knew that the 46 would not be long for this world. In two years, they built over 32,000 units, which is a pretty high number. When production was halted in late 1976, there was quite a lot of leftover stock, enabling DAF to keep displaying the 46 in their showrooms until mid-1977. This was probably intentional. There was never any question of rebadging these as Volvos, unlike the 66. It was curtains for the DAF flat-twin. Now, the Born factory focused on the Volvo 343, which would become its bread-and-butter for the next decade and a half.
Was it inevitable that the DAF 46’s life was to be cut short so soon? The body was getting a bit old (it was designed in the mid-‘60s) and the twin was also somewhat stale. But then look at the Mini, the 2CV or the Beetle: economy cars can have very long lives. The issue was not the 46’s intrinsic qualities, but Volvo’s image-consciousness. The DAF name was associated with this shape and the twin’s distinctive sound. Keeping the 46 as a Volvo was never an option – it was odd enough for Volvo to slap their badge on the Renault-engined 66. Besides, leaving the 2-cyl. engine in production made little sense: it was now about as big as it could get and air-cooled engines were clearly on their way out.
Both DAF and Volvo most knew that the 46 was doomed to have a very short shelf life, even before it was launched. The car’s only reason for existing, I suppose, was to try out the single-belt Variomatic – its only novel feature. I’m not aware of any other application for this system, though, so the whole exercise was not necessarily fruitful.
On the other hand, it was the very last 2-cyl. DAF in quite a long line, stretching back to the very origins of the company’s car range in 1958. In just under two decades, the only post-war Dutch carmaker had come and gone, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of its products puttering around Europe’s less hilly areas. And even in the Alps and the Pyrenees, it seems.
Related posts:
CC Global: DAF 66: Four Decades of Dutch Continuous Variability, by Robert Kim
Wow! That is one very clean example!
As for the seats: they are like Volvo’s of the same era. Comfortable but not too soft and with good support.
Some 20 years ago I had a DAF 66 as a winter beater. Lots of fun in the snow!
I must admit that despite both my parents being born in the Netherlands, and having been there a couple of times I have never so much as sat in or even noticed a DAF. During my month long childhood trip I was much more enamored with the 2CV.
I’m not normally one for ridiculous engine transplants, but a Hayabusa engine in one of these would take care of both the low power and the single leg transmission.
A contemporaneous Moto Guzzi Vee would offer a bit more power, dry clutch and 5 speeds. A new small block would likely work well also.
My bright, but nerdy, science teacher had a burgundy DAF. It was quite a novelty to us boys who were at an age of discovering cars. In the age of muscle, his car seemed to be a toy. The more we learned of it, the more we thought of it as a toy. Obviously, Mr. Heinz was precedent and ahead of the curve.
The car reflects its market. It is a well built push cart for a country of cyclists. Shell Oil might be Dutch, but oil costs in the Netherlands and a DAF engine sparingly uses it. The entire car goes about the way the Netherlands goes about – stoically. You try fitting anything larger than a DAF on the streets of Groeningen, or Haarlem and you’ll wish you had a car this tiny, but spacious.
This car was not made for exporting. It just doesn’t fit outside a landscape above sea level. So, Volvo had no choice but to find a way to make their DAF purchase profitable.
This is a remarkable example of a DAF.
It just doesn’t fit outside a landscape above sea level
So true… I still can’t fathom how the person who owns this one left the foothills of the Pyrenees and drove it 900 km to the Alps. Earplugs must have been required. And perhaps some other green Dutch products to make the time go by quicker…
That car is in amazing shape for a car 44 years old; heck, it’s in amazing shape for a car that would be 3 years old.
I had no idea DAF made cars, but it makes sense. I always thought of them as a truck manufacturer based on reading Johannes Dutch‘s fine articles.
Another thing I learned today… The CVT has been around for a long time! I thought it was a fairly new thing.
You learn something new at CC every day! 😀
Thanks for the fine article on a vehicle I knew nothing about, TATRA87.
I’ve only seen one or two DAFs in the US, and if I remember correctly they were 33’s. When I was young these seemed like fascinating exotics, and the fitment of the 4 cylinder engines in the 55 and 66 made them seem more appealing; horsepower never hurts. I also recall seeing some pictures of rally DAFs, a motorsport I was obsessed with (in magazines, I’ve never seen a single rally event). This is a nice example; though they didn’t stray far from each other, Michelotti’s designs for DAF and Triumph in this era were very fine and still look good nearly half a century later. Thanks for the write-up and photos!
I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a DAF in real life, but I do remember coming across these ads from when they were sold here (this one from a decade before this featured 46 was built). A major selling point was the automatic transmission, and I remember many of the ads were oriented to women.
My favorite was an ad featuring a matronly old woman saying “Even I can drive a DAF!” I can’t find an example of that ad, but here’s another one from the same era:
What a little gem! Makes me think of a Fiat with some VW type 3 styling clues.
The seats were more vinyl Vera French soft then German Helga concrete hard.
The 46 was a great niche as it was a flat twin-engine girdle shaker for ‘ye old spinster. The 46 was designed for old people and old people alone.
We’d call them girdle shakers because the flat twin would always give an unbalanced feel to the car’s body when you were waiting for a traffic light running stationary, and it would come ‘alive’ when the light went green and you’d pull away; I mean a Panhard flat Twin would also give you this unbalanced shake but it would turn into something mean and nervous to conquer the horizon if you pulled away, the DAF stayed bland to say the least but a Panhard was more of a sado mascocist, it wanted to be kicked into the kidneys and revv, revv revv, the DAF was like a protestant clergyman bland and rather neutral and slow I mean S.L.O.W.
Don’t forget that American cars had automatic gearboxes by the zillions here in Europe it took us to the first decade of this millennium for people to get it into their thick skulls that there is nothing sporty about a stick shift in a car but it is just a mindset !
DAF was an affordable alternative for older or disabled people who needed a car, all other small cars had rather crappy automatics like a VW Beetle or a Renault R8, an Opel Kadett these were all hellish priced against their stick shift counterparts :Europe motorist motto was : Thou shalt stir the gearbox oil by hand !
So this one was for people who weren’t in a hurry but who needed an economical car that would always be the first one ahead in a traffic jam.
You think there’s many Lada jokes ? they were all born under the DAF sign and then rebadged.
Anyway the 55 and 55 Marathon with their Renault 1100 and 1300 Cleon engines were a whole different breed then the 44/46 series.
And the bodywork was of quite a decent quality, in an era when a 6 year old car was considered old. I guess its spiritual successor must have been the Austin Allegro Automatic, same sort of people but probably annoyed and swearing at the quality of this Leyland product !
Austin Allegro? Really? I’d have thought a Renault 5 Automatique would have been closer to the DAF. Or a Fiat 126, for those who really wanted an air-cooled twin and RWD…
Funny you mention Panhard — they’re up next!
I may sound stupid for asking this but the shot of the Dafs underbody I presume there has been some sort of cover removed to see the underneath.
I can’t see the transmission belt lasting long if it was exposed to the elements all the time.
Bill
AFAIK, this is what they look like underneath. No cover, no plate, no protection.
There certainly appears to be a flange around the underside of the engine where a cover would be fitted. There are two slots at the front for the cover to engage with and probably some kind of quarter-turn latches at the rear. I imagine the cover would double as a cooling air duct. It seems reasonable…
My Mum had a ’66 DAF33 (GNT856D) from 69 to 73 and a ’70 DAF44 (TAW904J) from 73 to around 1983. It was the first car I drove legally after passing my test and I must have wound on 10000 miles in the 4 year before I got my first car – not just round rural Shropshire but from one end of Britain to the other.
The suspension was a bit firm – well compared to my subsequent Citroen Dyane – but the seats were big and comfortable on the 44 which was a big step up from the 33. Firm but not hard – all vinyl of course.
There was a button I seem to remember that you could press that would lock the transmission in low. Never used it. The brakes were pretty good I seem to recall: Mum’s style was to accumulate as much speed as possible and only lose it when absolutely, definitely, unavoidably necessary (she’s 87 now and still brakes late and hard). My style too.
Loved that DAF – liked the styling too. But then I always like the vaguely eccentric
Splendid! Both the article and the condition of that Lil’ Van Doorne. Ridiculed in its days (see Rammstein’s comment above), highly appreciated decades later.
I immediately thought of you when I saw it, JD.
I’m surprised it is not mentioned that the car can go just as fast in reverse as forward.
That green is such a ’70’s colour, I like it. Sad these came to an end, sounds like they fulfilled their brief well, being an economical urban transport solution. Much prettier than that peculiar looking Volvo 343 that took its place.
I am late here but wanted to register my approval. I would never have given ne of these a second look when they were new but think they are cool as can be now. Perhaps this means that I am now an old man? Or maybe it is that my appreciation for the quirky and daft has grown. I live in flat country so . . .