Show us your impressed/confiscated vehicle photos

[Bill Murray]

Hi Larry:
For sure a 1940 model based on the sidelights.
I do not have the time to further investigate tonight, but suspect either Lowlands country vehicle or possibly ex French.
Bill

[Larrister]

Thanks Bill.

[2jack]

from North Italy

Difficult to identify the vehicles from this photo.there are other photos carried out in North Italy?
Thanks!

[Larrister]

An officer in his 1935-40 Horch 830 Cabriolet 4 Turen.

[Larrister]

Mercedes-Benz Cabriolet 290 or 320 model.

[Bill Murray]

Hi Larry:
Thanks for the nice photos.
They both tend to support my theory, which is incredibly difficult to prove, that the the German Govt. fully intended to return most if not all of the confiscated civilian vehicles they got from German owners as soon as the conquest of Russia was complete. You will find German origin civilian trucks and cars carrying their original civilian registrations through to 1942 and in some cases even beyond.
Vehicles captured or confiscated in the conquered territories/countries almost always had the registration changed to WM, WH, WL or whatever as there was never any intention of repatriating the vehicles to their original owners.

Please keep them coming.

By the way, I am having a real problem with my document files resident on my old PC which I replaced in November with this one which has a really huge memory. I have been trying for a week to download the 20.000 plus photos I had in my doc files on the old PC to a Disc or CD or whatever and it is not working, possibly due to the thing just being worn out. It is also infected with a lot of spyware, malware and goodness knows what else so I took it off line when I got the new one. I am trying a new tactic tonight to see if I can transfer all the old photos to some medium and install that result on this PC so I can post stuff from the past.
Bill

[Larrister]

Hi Bill,

Your theory on numberplates may be correct. A lot of my vehicle photos have their original German plates still on them. Some quite a way into the war.

Yet a lot that were confiscated in Germany have WM, LW or WH plates.

Could it also be possible that the system for registering confiscated vehicles broke down to some degree as the war progressed. Especially when vehicles were being lost in large numbers.

I have noticed that civilian numberplates seem to be present more on Heer vehicles as opposed to the other branches of the German armed forces.

Sorry to hear about your computer problems. Do you have any anti-spyware programs?

If not, Ad-Aware SE Personal or Spybot are good and are free downloads.

Cheers,

Larry

[Bill Murray]

Hi Larry:

This is not a serious analysis, but I think you are on the same track as I am.
The Heer seems to have gotten the most of the rather ordinary civilian vehicles off the German economy. As stated earlier, my take is that they did intend to return the vehicles to their original owners.

From evidence taken off of my own book/original photo files plus a ton of stuff off of ebay the last five years seems to indicate that the German Air Force and Navy (WL & WM) for the most part relied on confiscated vehicles from countries other than Germany. Not in all cases, but you just don't see Packards, Cadillacs, Jaguars etc. with WH registration, only WL and WM in the main.

As to the files from the old PC, I am now in hour number two of a hopefully successful download of the 20K photos to a DVD. I will be long asleep before the download stops so I can only wait until my first pee break at about 0200 to see if it worked.
Bill

[Larrister]

Hi Bill,

Buses tend to be difficult to identify and it is the case with this one. There is a logo on the grille that looks like the Opel one but I can't find anything close. Any ideas?

Cheers,
Larry

[Bill Murray]

Hi Larry:
I believe this is what was called an "Autobahn Blitz" with streamlined aluminium coachwork, popular in the late 1930's. I seem to recall a pic of a similar bus and will post it if I can find it.
Bill

[Larrister]

Hi Bill,

Thanks. Was the Autobahn-Blitz made by Opel? The emblem on the grille looks like the one found on Opel Blitz trucks.

Here's another recent addition to my collection.

A couple of 1935-36 Ford V8 Cabriolet 4's.

Cheers,
Larry

[Bill Murray]

Hi Larry:
Those are 1935 models and the series on ebay showed a real gaggle of them. Glad you were successful.
Rather like the Packards on another thread here, I wonder if the Army impressed a whole fleet of such cars from some dealer or a private company or what?? Very unusual to see so many identical passenger cars in one unit.
Sorry, the Autobahn Opel busses were made by private coachworks.
Bill

[velocett]

Unknown car.

Das ist "DKW Sonderklasse 1937-1940"

[velocett]

Hello Bill,

Here is another photo of mine showing an impressed car. It's a pity the photo quality is so poor. Is this car a Horsch 853 convertible?

Best regards,
Larrister

Ja,das ist HORCH 853 oder 853A

[velocett]

Unidentified.

Das ist "Ford Vairogs Junior"Dieses Autos im Vorkriegs zeit gebaute im Lettland