Climbing ability, a forgotten criterion when buying a vehicle
11/01/2012
Anyone planning to buy a car 40 or more years ago who didn't just want to drive on flat terrain also measured the object of their desire against the criterion of "climbing ability".
Climbing ability refers to the ability of a vehicle to climb a slope. Anyone who has ever tried to tackle an uphill stretch in a Citroën 2CV from the 1950s knows what is meant. At some point, even first gear seems too short ...
This criterion was correspondingly important in vehicle tests (and in advertising). Automobil Revue, for example, measured continuous climbing ability in all forward gears. The test verdict for the VW Beetle 1200 in 1961, for example, was that a 26% gradient could be climbed in first gear at a speed of 10 km/h, while in fourth gear an 8% gradient could be mastered at a speed of 60 km/h and 4% at 100 km/h.
The climbing ability is influenced by the engine power, the gear ratio, the drive concept, the weight distribution and the tires (in decreasing order of priority). Today, all this is no longer an issue, because we have plenty of power even in the smallest vehicles.
The color brochure for the Hansa 1100 from 1959, from which the picture shown is taken, can of course be found in the Zwischengas archive, as can a historical test report from 1958.
