Our threads become tied together as Europe plunged into the Great Depression.
First, in 1928, Puch, listless after the unexpected death of its founder, merged with Austro Daimler, which had recently lost Dr Porsche to Steyr – which then had to be bailed out just a year later, as its car sales collapsed from 5000 to a mere 13 (yes, 13) in 1930, then be bought out by its compatriots in 1935. Thus we now have one conglomerate, named Steyr-Daimler-Puch.
World War II forced a sudden switch in tack, the Austrian factories making guns and Porsche-designed V8 trucks for the Nazi military.
Trucks continued to be the focus after the war, along with buses and tractors, but the firm didn’t want to abandon cars, so it signed a deal to produce modified Fiat designs from 1948.
Most significant among them was the tiny, super-affordable 500 that got Italy moving post-war, and the Austrians did some cool sporting versions too, as Autocar found out in 1967 in the Steyr-Puch 650 TRII, which had just claimed a shock European Rally Championship title. “Its remarkable 650cc air-cooled flat twin, which develops an amazing 36bhp, sounds sweet, very healthy and eager to go on being thrashed.”
As for the military machinery, we found of the lightweight Haflinger 4×4 “the worse the conditions, the more the car impresses” and of the later, larger, 6×6 Pinzgauer: “There is little to beat it. To see it forging uphill through saplings and other obstacles is truly awe-inspiring.”