Szawe: Awesome 18-year-old gift for the baroness
This article was first published in Finansavisen Motor.
HELSINGØR, DENMARK: One hundred years ago, Henry Ford had such a turn on T-Ford production in the United States that he had long ago settled on production sites outside the state. The volumes were so large that it would be profitable to ship parts to Europe and put the cars together there.
With Henry Ford’s right hand man, William S. Knudsen, Danish contributed enough to Copenhagen being chosen as the place of production for the European mainland. From the factory in Nørrebro, the approximately 150 factory workers produced thousands of cars a year for the whole of Scandinavia, Germany, the Baltics and Poland. Mass production had also reached Denmark, and Ford topped the sales statistics.
Superb luxury
In the completely different than from the Danish sales statistics in 1922, you found some car brands with just one registered car. Among other things, a car of the brand Szawe, manufactured by the company Szabo & Wechselmann in Berlin.
Where Ford focuses on simplification, minimalism and large-scale benefits at the lowest possible cost, the German brand represents the exact opposite. Luxury and opulence, craftsmanship and exclusive materials were their main trademark.
If Ford continued was not a car for “most people” (because they did not have a car in 1922), then the Szawe was a car for the very, very rich. The founders had decided to do this when they started in 1920. When Baron Mogens Holck of Holckenhavn on the Fyn estate of the same name acquired a copy, they had probably continued to benefit from creating a number of the number of cars since it started.
18th birthday gift
The estate, which still exists, has an area of 9,200 acres, with 5,800 acres of cultivated land, so it was not exactly a small farm. And the revenue was then. So when the daughter at the castle, Baroness Holck turned 18, she got this Szawe 10/38 as a birthday present from her father, the Baron.
And he had not exactly gone to the nearest car dealership to buy a car for his daughter. How he ends up buying perhaps the most exotic car in the country at the time, but he must have good contacts in Germany and Berlin. For Szawe was not a brand with representation in Denmark, and in terms of price he could probably buy Rolls-Royce or Hispano-Suiza.
Purchased components
As for many manufacturers at the time, based on buying all the technology and limiting themselves to putting it all together with a custom-designed body. On the baroness’s car, the body is built in mahogany, with details in silver-plated brass and copper. Not exactly everyday materials in cars. Szawe is based on chassis, engine and drivetrain from another German manufacturer, NAG.
The bodies of the Szawe were designed by the painter and technician Ernst Neumann-Neander, and unlike anything else, it was like a boat on wheels. Each Szawe was designed according to the customer’s wishes, right down to the body with wooden inserts or silver-plated radiator frame. No wonder movie actors and opera singers were among the buyers.
Only one left
At the end of 1923, it was branded Ehrhardt-Szawe, but sales continued to be very limited, and Szabo & Wechselmann left in 1924.
Probably no more than around 20 cars had been produced, and this Danish copy is the only one known by the brand in the whole world. It was given to the Technical Museum of Denmark in Elsinore after limited use by the Baroness.
And there it has stood for several generations without much attention, even though it is one of the country’s most exclusive and guaranteed unique cars.