It smells of leather, of wood, of sweat, of work. We are in the workshop of Ole Koch, where cars are built. That it isn’t the smell of petrol and old engine oil greeting the visitor has a simple explanation: Ole Koch doesn’t build just any cars — he has specialised in crafting vintage models in the style of the 1920s.
Anyone looking around Koch’s workshop feels transported back a hundred years. His workshop — a manufactory, really — in an old half-timbered house near Cologne, Germany, extends over two floors, where wooden parts are sawn and sanded, sheet metal is hammered into shape, and leather is cut and sewn. It isn’t only the cars that are traditional; so is the way they are built.
One-offs, as in the old days
In the 1920s there was as yet no self-supporting body and no automated production. Assembly-line manufacture had indeed been invented a few years earlier by Henry Ford, but it was far from established. And it changed little about the way motor cars were built. The load-bearing element was the chassis, onto which a body was mounted — often made to the buyer’s wishes.
In his recreations, Koch concentrates on what can be seen — the body, or the tin boxes, as he calls them. Here he keeps as close as possible to the production methods of yesteryear. Whether assembly-line work or one-off construction, the only technique known in coachbuilding was the composite method, in which a wooden frame is clad with aluminium panelling. Koch’s tin boxes, too, rest on a chassis combining wood and metal. The body on top consists of a basic plywood frame, which is then clad with aluminium sheet. Almost as on the originals, in other words.
A man of many talents, Koch designs, plans and builds the models entirely on his own. They all draw on the iconic cars of the Roaring Twenties, from racing cars to estates to delivery vans. “Much like a model family, my tin boxes always share a similar front end. From the torpedo panel rearwards, it is completed by an individual body. My tin boxes are meant to look authentic and to be able to tell a story.”
So anyone who thinks they recognise this or that marque in Koch’s models is mistaken — the originals of the day serve merely as inspiration. He skilfully combines period borrowings and assorted design details into a new ensemble. Shaping the body and the fittings gives him enormous pleasure, Koch says. His current range comprises several racing cars, a delivery van and a shooting brake. On his workbench right now is a flatbed truck with an open load bed; a convertible with a folding roof is already being planned, and an open tourer is to join the line-up before long.
Handwork and original parts
“I take my cues mainly from the English saloons and racing cars of the 1920s — above all the supercharged racers and the estates bodied for the hunt. My tin boxes are not, however, copies of any particular model; rather, the originals provide inspirations that I combine into something new in my own designs,” Koch muses. That the wood comes from sustainable sources also fits the image of this bearded perfectionist.
Ole Koch devotes particular attention to the sheet-metal body. The process seems almost ritual. He bends the bare aluminium sheets into the desired shape, stretches them in the traditional manner over a jute sack filled with sand and works the fine metal into form with a heavy wooden mallet. Artfully curved wings have vanished from modern coachbuilding, as has the tool used to make them, the so-called English wheel. In Koch’s tin-box manufactory it is still in service. With the spread of mass production, deep drawing in enormous presses displaced this beautiful handwork on the body — work that demands not only a good eye but also a steady hand, so that every curve and every edge is perfectly formed.
Painstaking precision
The metal parts he mills, turns, drills and files himself — from tubes, steel sheet or solid stock, depending on the application. Visible parts are browned to protect them from corrosion. Then everything is screwed or glued together, a perfect fit achieved through painstaking fingertip work. And whatever isn’t handmade is original: cheap copies have no place in his workshop, Koch says. “The fittings I don’t make myself, such as wheel rims, headlamps or instruments, are always historic original parts that I track down at home and abroad.”
The majority of the fitted components, however — steering wheels, seats, dashboards, exhausts, number plates — are made in-house. So that everything matches in the end, the new parts are elaborately patinated, that is, artificially aged. The wooden parts are a small masterpiece. You don’t need to build models yourself to see that Koch is a professional with a trained eye for detail. Every component is carefully filed and sanded until it fits.
“I take my cues mainly from the English saloons,” Koch recalls of his first classic, which he took on in a derelict state. “Mounted on the chassis was a body of wood and sheet metal. The timber was completely rotten, and I had to remake it all.” Even back then, he remembers, the work gave him great pleasure. Since then, one classic after another has passed through his hands; he currently drives, among others, a 1973 Jaguar XJ6 Series 1, a 1967 Fintail Mercedes and a 1984 Alfa Romeo Spider.
Cars without engines
Koch, who studied art and textile design, spends up to 500 hours on a single model. He has no formal craft training. He is an autodidact, he says, elegantly slipping in a play on words. What his cars do not have is engines. His one-offs are props for films or photography and can serve as show pieces — even though Koch himself is a passionate lover of genuine classic cars.
Almost thirty years ago, he recounts, he bought himself an IFA F8 convertible with special coachwork by Gläser. The F8, built in the then GDR by the Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau, traces back to the DKW F8, whose origins lay in the 1930s. The car’s construction, accordingly, was close to what he builds today.
Yet that still doesn’t answer the question of what brings someone to commit to such a niche and build model cars professionally. As so often, chance played godfather. “I came to building my tin boxes by a roundabout route. I have always been preoccupied with design. And I’ve been interested in classic cars for just as long. Bringing those two passions together, though, was long off my radar. When my children asked me two years ago to build them a soapbox cart, I knew at once what it should look like. The whole thing thrilled me so much that I was determined to turn it into a business idea.” With his small manufactory, Ole Koch has made his passion his profession.
This article appeared in MEN issue 1/21 (November 2021).
