DAF Trucks NV is a truck maker from the Netherlands and is a subsidiary of Paccar, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks. Both their manufacturing plants and headquarters are located in Eindhoven. Their axle assemblies and cabs are developed in their Westerlo factory in Belgium.
To better increase their production, they hired Leyland Trucks to design and develop some of their truck models. The Leyland Trucks are built at their Farington factory in Preston, England.
The company was founded by Hubert van Doorne in 1982 together with A.H. Huenges who is also an owner of a brewery. Its initial name is Commanditaire Vennootschap Hub van Doorne’s Machinefabriek. Van Doorne actually worked for Huenges by repairing his cars. He did a pretty good job in it that Huenges offered him a deal to finance his own company.
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He started the small shop inside Huenges’ brewery. In 1932, the company was fully given supervision to Van Doorne and his brother Wim. They then decided to change the company’s name to Van Doorne’s Aanhangwagen Fabriek or DAF which translates to Van Doorne’s Trailer Factory in English.
Image source: wikimedia.org
Huenges decided to leave the company in 1936 and handed over the whole company to Van Doorne. They designed the Trado conversions to fully transform the 4×2 Ford trucks to a 6×4 drive. The Trado drivetrain also gave way to the construction of DAF’s first armored vehicle, the M39 Pantserwagen. This was meant to be used for the Second World War but it was released late and only three units of it went to combat.
Aside from trucks, DAF also manufactured cars. They released their first passenger car, the DAF 600, followed by the Daffodil models DAF 30, DAF 31, and DAF 32. In 1986, they released a new car, the DAF 55 which has an engine derived from the Renault 8 Cleon engine.
Here is the full list of DAF models and variants:
- DAF 66
- DAF 55
- DAF 33 Break
- DAF 44
- DAF YP 408
- DAF 46
- DAF 600
- DAF fire truck
- Classic DAF 2600 cab over truck
- DAF YA 328 military truck
Photos of DAF different types of cars
(Photos Courtesy of http://www.wikipedia.org)
