Puma (car) - DKW Years

DKW Years

The origin of what became the Puma was the DKW-Malzoni, built by Rino Malzoni of Matão in São Paulo (state) from around 1964. Malzoni was a keen auto racer, and at the behest of DKW-Vemag he developed a competition car based around a DKW straight-three two-stroke engine. Developed to compete with the Willys Interlagos, a locally built copy of the Alpine A108 which was outpacing DKW's heavier sedans, Malzoni developed a steel-bodied prototype. This proved too heavy, and at the São Paulo Motor Show in the fall of 1964 the light, fiberglass-skinned GT made its first appearance. It won its first race, at Interlagos in 1964. Malzoni, auto enthusiast but a lawyer by trade, proceeded to found the company Luminari Ltda with a group of other auto enthusiasts in 1964. Competition cars had bigger 1.1 litre engines with as much as 100 PS (74 kW). The cars began to sell in quantities larger than he himself could build, and on 14 September 1966 the company adopted the Puma name and began building cars in earnest.

The Malzoni GT usually had a panoramic rear windshield, although a very few cars were built of a three-box design. The original GT Malzoni body was then modified by designer Anisio Campos, who made the car somewhat longer and mounted the bumpers higher up, while the car (still on DKW-basis) was now named Puma GT. Production of the Malzoni GT (1964-1966, all types) was about 35 cars. Annual production increased to 125 for 1967 and continued briefly into 1968. All-in-all, about 170 of the DKW-engined cars (Pumas and Malzonis) were built.