Gräf & Stift

Gräf & Stift was an Austrian manufacturer of automobiles, trucks, buses and trolleybuses, from 1902 until 2001, latterly as a subsidiary of MAN. Founded in 1902 by the brothers Franz, Heinrich and Karl Gräf, and the investor, Wilhelm Stift. Before the Second World War, the company was a well-known manufacturer of luxury automobiles, including the Double Phaeton that carried Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, when they were assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914. By the 1930s Gräf & Stift had begun making trucks and buses, and it ceased car manufacturing in 1938. The company merged with Österreichische Automobil Fabriks-AG (ÖAF) in 1971, becoming ÖAF-Gräf & Stift AG, and later the same year was taken over by MAN AG. It continued in business as a subsidiary of MAN, and the Gräf & Stift name remained in use as a MAN brand for the Austrian market and for trolleybuses until 2001, when ÖAF-Gräf & Stift AG was renamed MAN Sonderfahrzeuge AG. It was located in Vienna, and the production facilities continue in use there, but no longer using the Gräf & Stift name.

The Gräf brothers started a bicycle service workshop in Vienna in 1893, quickly branching out into bicycle manufacturing. Their bicycles sold well, requiring the company to relocate to be able to increase capacity. While the bicycle business in Europe was booming, the brothers also saw potential in the fledgling automobile, and commissioned Josef Kainz to design one. The result was an unusual voiturette with by a one-cylinder De Dion-Bouton engine fitted in front of the vehicle, powering the front axle, built sometime between 1895 and 1898, according to various sources. It was thus arguably the world's first front-wheel drive automobile, but it never saw mass production, with only one copy ever made, even though the technology was eventually patented in 1900. However, the voiturette remained in regular use until 1914 and was in working condition yet at the dawn of the 1970s.

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