Due to the shortage of fuel during the First World War, and with funding from the German military authorities, development began on a steam-powered car, the DampfKraftWagen – the acronym of which was DKW.
In the years following the war, motorcycle production began, introducing an important innovation in the use of a pressed-steel frame, which made mass production considerably easier. By the end of the decade, DKW had become, quite simply, the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world.
With the onset of the Great Depression, this bright scenario came to an abrupt halt, leading the company to the brink of bankruptcy and prompting a merger, in 1932, with the car manufacturers Audi, Wanderer, and Horch to form the Auto Union AG. A revitalised DKW then began investing in motorsport as a means to promote and improve its production models, going on to win the European championship several times.
When the NZ 350 model was introduced in 1938, it was an immediate success – a handsome and sophisticated machine with a two-stroke engine mounted in a frame that was a masterpiece of engineering, constructed from two pressed-steel halves electrically welded together.
However, the invasion of Poland and the outbreak of war halted civilian sales, without initially opening the door to military contracts, as the Wehrmacht was at first uninterested in two-stroke engines. Nevertheless, the urgent need to adopt a reliable motorcycle for reconnaissance and liaison duties led to a renewed interest in the DKW NZ 350. With an output of 11.5 hp, the machine entered production for the Wehrmacht almost unchanged from the civilian version. The motorcycles were delivered in two dark colours: schwarzgrau (black-grey) for Luftwaffe units, and dunkelgrau (dark grey) for the Wehrmacht, followed by a beige version known as Sahara.
The first changes to the model came after 45,000 units had been produced, when the NZ 350/1943 was introduced, featuring redesigned mudguards, a smaller headlamp, and a new cyclone air filter. In 1944, a further modification appeared, with the engine block now made of cast iron, and the model was renamed NZ 350-1.
It is worth noting that the NZ 350 proved far more popular and useful on the Western Front than on the Eastern Front, where its relatively modest ground clearance of just 12 cm made it ill-suited to the poor or non-existent road network of the Soviet Union.