Tempo (company)

For the Ford Motor Company vehicle, see Ford Tempo. For other uses, see Tempo (disambiguation).
Vidal & Sohn Tempo-Werke GmbH
Public?
Industry Automobiles
Fate production ceased
Founded 1924
Defunct 1977
Headquarters Hamburg
Products LCV (1949-1966), off-road cars (1935-1958), military vehicles (1940s), cars (1934-1957)
Parent Hanomag (1965-1970), Daimler-Benz (1971-1977)
Website No official homepage

Tempo, (also known as Vidal & Sohn Tempo-Werke GmbH), was a German automobile manufacturer based in Hamburg. The company was founded by Oscar Vidal in 1924.

The company was well known in Germany, producing popular vans like the Matador and the Hanseat. Tempo also produced small military vehicles during the 1930s and 1940s.

History

Tempo Hanseat

Tempo was founded as Vidal & Sohn Tempo-Werke in 1924. During the 1940s, Tempo produced small military vehicles. Post-war the requirement of the Bundesgrenzschutz, in West Germany, to acquire a suitable vehicle for Border patrol led to production of the 80" and 86" Tempo from 1953 to 1957. The Tempo 80" and 86" were built using a rolling chassis from Land Rover, but attempts to continue production with the 88" and 109" models were not successful.

In 1958, Firodia Ltd, an Indian manufacturer of cars (now known as Force Motors), started the production of Hanseat three-wheeled cars with the collaboration of Tempo-Werke. Later on, Tempo introduced the Matador, which (along with the Hanseat) was extremely popular in India where it was used as goods carrying vehicles. The four-wheeled Matador remained under production by Tempo from 1949 till 1967.

In 1966, Tempo partnered with Hanomag AG, the produced vehicles were sold under the name of Hanomag. From 1967 to 1970 the vehicles were sold under the new name "Hanomag-Henschel". In 1971, Hanomag-Henschel, and within Tempo, was purchased by Daimler-Benz AG. Tempo remained on the production of vans until 1977. From 1966 to 1977, all vehicles produced by Tempo were sold under a different name, either Hanomag, Rheinstahl-Hanomag, Hanomag-Henschel, or Mercedes-Benz.

Various Tempo vehicles were once extremely common as goods carrying vehicle on the streets of Indian cities where the Indian company marketed them.

Licensed production by other companies

1950 Tempo Matador
1939 Tempo Vidal G 1200
Hanomag-Henschel F 20
Tempo Hanseat boxvan
Tempo Matador F307 built by Force Motors, then Bajaj Tempo was in production till 2000

Goliath motors ltd in Bremen (Part of the Borgward-group) also produced a threewheeler until 1961, but this was not a version of the Hanseat.

Models

Tempo Hanseat Flatbed

See also

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, May 06, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.