Transmissions drove Hub van Doorne’s innovative spirit

If there is one automotive technology for which Dutchman Hub van Doorne became world famous, it is the continuously variable transmission.

The creation of the CVT is one of the reasons that van Doorne has earned a place in the European Automotive Hall of Fame.

In March, he will join three other Class of 2009 inductees in the Hall: Sports car and tractor maker Ferruccio Lamborghini; prolific independent sports car designer Giovanni Michelotti; and former Mercedes-Benz CEO Werner Breitschwerdt.

Shortly after the foundation of his machine shop and trailer-making plant in the southern Dutch town of Eindhoven in 1928, Van Doorne started working on innovative transmission systems.

His Trado all-wheel-drive system for military vehicles was patented in 1937. It was used for more than 30 years on DAF artillery trucks. The system was well known for its off-road capabilities, even under the most severe conditions. It was officially certified by NATO for use in its vehicles in the 1950s.

But even while focusing on the foundation of his heavy truck manufacturing activities under the name of DAF (Van Doorne’s Automobielfabrieken), from 1948 onwards Hub van Doorne’s dream was to build a fully automatic small car. This ambition led to his first CVT application, a rubber-belt transmission that he was able to use in the DAF 600, a compact four-seat car, in 1958.

Van Doorne’s determination to overcome any hurdle to achieve his goal became legendary inside his small factory. His first CVT-equipped prototype car would go no faster than 36kph during early test drives in 1956.

But 20 years later, Van Doorne had proven his system’s worth. By then almost 1 million DAF passengers cars with the Variomatic rubber-belt CVT had been sold, and DAFs had won races and rallies.

But Hub van Doorne did not rest on his laurels, and initiated research on his second generation CVT after his retirement in 1965, working from a small shed behind his house.

When he died in 1979, his innovative CVT with a flexible steel push belt was still a prototype. But in 1985 mass production started at Van Doorne’s Transmissie, or VDT, a dedicated CVT production facility in the Netherlands. Ford, with the Fiesta, and Fiat, with the Uno, were early adopters of the system.

VDT was taken over by German supplier Robert Bosch in 1995. In 2007, the company produced its 10 millionth CVT belt.

The system is now applied to models ranging from the Toyota iQ minicar to the Mercedes-Benz A-class entry premium model and the Nissan Murano large SUV.