Framo Stromer

Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen, who founded DKW, set up Metallwerke Frankenberg in 1923 in a former army barracks at Frankenberg in Saxony. At first it made saddles, clutches and carburettors for DKW’s motorcycle works at Zschopau.source 1source 2 From 1927 it built cheap three-wheeled delivery vans, and with them it came through the Depression well (see Framo / DKW delivery tricars, below).source 1source 2 In the early 1930s Framo turned what it had learned about light construction to passenger cars.source 2 The first was the Stromer.

Of the three wheels on this three-wheeler, it was the front pair that drove. An air-cooled DKW single sat ahead of them, with four speeds and a reverse. The frame was a single central tube, and the exhaust gases ran through it.source 1 The body was plywood, covered in artificial leather, and German Wikipedia says it carried two adults and two children; the club’s type list says two.source 1source 3 There were two engines: the FP 200 had 192 cc and 6 PS (4.4 kW), the FP 300 295 cc and 9 PS (6.6 kW). It would reach 60 km/h (37 mph).source 1source 3

It was free of vehicle tax, and it could be driven without a driving licence, which put it among Germany’s licence-free cars of the day.source 1 ADAC Motorwelt, on 14 July 1933, rated it one of the most original and advanced small cars of its time, by German Wikipedia’s report of the review.source 1 When it was launched is not settled: German Wikipedia says 1932/33, and the club’s type list dates both Stromers to 1934.source 1source 3 The firm itself became Framo-Werke GmbH, from FRAnkenberger MOtorenwerke, on 1 January 1934, and from 1933 production moved, stage by stage, to Hainichen.source 1source 2

The Piccolo

The Stromer’s successor had four wheels. The Piccolo, launched in 1934 as an attempt at a German people’s car by the Lane museum’s account, put its engine at the back and drove only the left rear wheel, by chain; later Piccolos wore a dummy radiator at the front. It came as the VH 300 in 1934–⁠35 and the VH 200, with 192 cc and 7 PS, in 1935.source 1source 3source 4

Neither car stood much chance, by the firm’s own history, against small cars that buyers already knew, the Opel Laubfrosch, the Dixi DA 1 and the Hanomag 2/10 PS, the “Kommissbrot”.source 2 In three years only about 1,070 of the three series were sold.source 1 The Stromer’s chassis lived on under Framo’s first four-wheeled van, the FPT 300,source 1 and Framo went back to what it knew, which was vans.

Framo’s first vehicle, the TV 300 of 1927, was a delivery tricar at its barest: the front of a motorcycle, a load bed for 500 kg, a chain driving the front wheel, and up to 40 km/h (25 mph). It had no steering wheel, no cab, no starter and no reverse, and anyone holding a motorcycle licence could drive one.source 1source 2 (Germany’s other tax tricars, and what came after them, are on the micro-vans page.)

A prototype three-wheeler for Sunday outings, the ZW 200, came before the LT 200, by the firm’s history.source 2 The chassis of the LT 200 and LT 300 of 1931 were exported to India to be given rickshaw bodies; the LTH 200 and 300 of 1933 at last had a steering wheel and a reverse gear.source 1 How many of these tricars were built has not been found.

The vans outlived the cars. Framo built the V 500 from 1939. In 1943 vehicle production stopped, and the works made armaments using forced labour from a subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp; the managing director, Hans Werner Skafte Rasmussen, died in Soviet internment at Toszek in 1945. The firm was nationalised in 1949 and renamed Barkas in 1957.source 1source 2

No count of surviving Stromers has been found; nor has any auction result. The photographs on this page show a green FP 200 roadster at a classic-car gala in Schwetzingen in 2021, a closed FP 200 at the August Horch Museum in Zwickau and a bare chassis at the ZeitWerkStadt museum in Frankenberg. The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville owns a Piccolo prototype of 1933/34, with 192 cc, 4 bhp and three speeds and reverse.source 4

Frankenberg keeps the name alive. A new Framo museum opened there after the old one, at Mühlbacher Straße 7, closed on 22 December 2020, and the Framo and Barkas enthusiasts hold a meeting in the town every year; the 2026 meeting was in June.source 5