About What is it? Quiz #484: 1925 Slaby-Behringer

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We received this photo from our friend Hans van Ingen Schenau, we never heard from this make before. But when we googled the make, it appeared much easier as we thought. We therefore decided it was a good quiz for last week, as the week before (Puzzle #197) we only received 2 good answers.

And our plan worked, we received no less than 14 answers. Of which 6 of them had a photo included. But what it is? A Slaby-Behringer. The information we got with the photo was: 'This is the original SB-Wagen, from the engineers Dr. Slaby and Behringer who built it in Berlin at the Markgrafendamm. Interesting is the "Knüppellenkung", who is steering the car. The car on the photo is with a DKW engine and had the nickname "Der kleine Bergsteiger'. and was able to drive 60 km/h.

First answer came from Kevin Atkinson: 'The nickname was der kleine Bergsteiger "The Little Climber".
Although many of their products used electric propulsion, it used a single cylinder stationary DKW engine mounted on the left hand running board.
It looked much like their earlier electric cyclecars but was an all-new design which proved prone to overheating and was quickly discontinued after just 2 prototypes were built. 
Both Slaby-Beringer and DKW were controlled by industrialist J. S. Rasmussen.'

Joop Terpstra sent us a photo of the young son Arne of J.S. Rasmussen behind the wheel of such a car.

Fritz Hegemann gave us some extra information: 'After a failed engagement in Japan (an earthquake destroyed there many imported cars) Slaby-Beringer was-taken over in 1924 by DKW and became the nucleus of the DKW car-production. The dispensable AWS Shopper was a later successor'

Erler Thomas told us the weight of the car: 250 Kgs and that the car is most likely from 1925. However others thought it was 1919/1920.

Jaap ter Linden said: 'Quite succesful, 1000 cars were exported to Japan. Different models, even a twoseater with three axles'

Slaby-Behringer or DKW?

Many answers were that the car is one of the first DKW cars. Our source however, is saying that it later became DKW(as Mr. Rasmussen owned both) and that this car was a real Slaby Beringer, but had a DKW engine in it. On the other hand, Michael Schlenger explained: 'The car is wrongly addressed as a Slaby-Beringer in the older literature (Werner Oswald), but DKW only used a body of a 2-seater of that manufacturer from Berlin.' Unfortunately, his source was offline and so we are still not sure. We hope Michael(or anyone else) can tell us more about this proposition.

Neil Beadle explained it also a bit: 'Using a Slaby-Beringer-Elektrowagen electric car as a starting point, engineers from DKW installed one of its two stroke auxiliary engines, developed from a Hugo Ruppe (founder of MAF cars) design, on the left running board.'. On the other hand, Robbie Marenzi said:', it looked a lot like the Slaby-Beringer cyclecar, Dr Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen had taken control of the company, but was in fact an independent design.'

The winner:

Well, although we thought it was easier than last week, it gave extra doubts. A Slaby-Behringer or DKW? And we therefore decided not to choose a winner yet. Please, if you are competing and you can tell us more about what car it really is (incl. reliable, available sources) please let us know!

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