Gräf & Stift

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Gräf & Stift was an Austrian automaker founded by the brothers Franz, Heinrich and Carl Gräf, and the Investor, Wilhelm Stift. The Gräf brothers started a workshop in 1893, in which they developed the world's first front-wheel drive automobile in 1898 (and patented the technology in 1900). The investor Wilhelm Stift joined them in 1901, and the Gräf & Stift company was founded in 1904.

The 1910 Gräf & Stift Double Phaeton in which the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was riding at the time of his assassination on June 28, 1914

The company built large luxury cars that were popular with the Austrian aristocracy and even the Habsburg royal family. As well as luxury cars, Gräf & Stift also became an important manufacturer of buses as well as tram bodies. One of the Gräf & Stift luxury limousines, a 1910 Double Phaeton, was ordered by Count Franz von Harrach. In 1914 in Sarajevo, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife rode together with Harrach in this car, when Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke. The assassination provoked a series of diplomatic manouevres that quickly led to declarations of war and the onset of the First World War.

After the war, the company's works in the Liesing district of Vienna manufactured mainly trucks and buses. In 1971 the company merged with Österreichische Automobil Fabriks-AG (ÖAF) to form ÖAF-Gräf & Stift AG, which in turn was taken over by MAN AG the same year. MAN has later built a new plant on Gräf & Stift's original site in Liesing and continues to be the biggest employer in the area.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding German Wikipedia article as of 3 September 2006.