We car geeks tend to either disdain or ignore continuously variable transmissions today, but it’s worth remembering that there was a time when they were downright revolutionary. And the vanguard of that revolution was a little Dutch carmaker called DAF, who were the first to mass-produce any sort of continuously-variable transmission, their belt-driven Variomatic system.
Remember, back in the day, small, inexpensive cars just didn’t have any sort of automatic option. You got a clutch and some gears, often three, four if you were lucky, and you liked it, dammit. So the idea of a small car with the decadent, one-legged luxury of an automatic transmission was a very big deal.
Most DAF brochures, like this 1964 one for the American market, tended to focus on that automatic transmission, because that was the big differentiator for the DAF versus, say, a Volkswagen. But I like how this one also notes that it’s “fast.”
“Fast,” of course, can mean different things to different people, and compared to, say, a mule or an end table, the Daffodil was very fast. Compared to other cars, maybe less so. That little air-cooled flat-twin you see up there was 750cc and made a decent-for-the-displacement-in-that-era 30 horsepower, enough to launch it at speeds of up to 65 mph, though getting there would take you over 30 seconds.
That engine cutaway is a little unusual in that it’s showing the engine from the back, which wasn’t usually the case. There’s also a great diagram of the Variomatic transaxle there, with its two big belts.
This brochure is really charming in a mid-’60s way, where everything seems to have been shot in a studio and scenes were just sort of “suggested,” allowing for some real cost savings as wildly rare and expensive items like a volleyball and an awning could just be portrayed by drawings instead of having to source the real things.
These sort of minimalist community theater stage set like environments also gave distorted views of what is acceptable parking-wise, as I’m pretty sure no zoo lets you just park right in the middle of it, between the lone parrot and the monkeys, which you can let your kids just feed bananas by shoving them through the bars.
I like how big a deal this brochure makes out of the Daffodil’s trunk, which is, to be fair, pretty good-sized for what was a little car, and that picture there is a fantastic example of one of those well-packed trunk pictures I fetishize.
I also like the caption on the lower photo, “Everyone enjoys the superb view in all directions” which really just means “this car has windows.”
Look at this smug fella, proudly admiring that his Daffodil not only has an opening door – the same way to access the inside of the car that Rolls-Royces use – but also has a seat for when you do finally decide to go inside. Pretty swank!
Also, let’s appreciate these fine DAF taillights; I really like the (barely?) amber indicator section in that little chrome-trimmed boxy section in the middle, like a belt or necklace around the overall tapered-lozenge form of the lamp. They also appear to be the same on both sides, smart from a manufacturing standpoint.
One last thing about the DAF Daffodil – the advertising tagline “New Fast Automatic Daffodil” was taken by a UK-based band I’d previously not heard of in the late ’80s/early ’90s as their name.
Here, listen:
Who knew?
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