DAF DAF 600 History

Unveiled at the 1958 Amsterdam RAI Motor Show and entering production in early 1959, the DAF 600 was the first passenger car to reach customers with a continuously variable transmission. Hub van Doorne's Variomatic used rubber V-belts running on expanding steel pulleys driven by engine speed and manifold vacuum, eliminating the clutch pedal entirely and allowing smooth, stepless ratio changes.

Power came from an air-cooled 590 cc flat-twin producing around 22 hp — modest even by late-1950s standards, but the frictionless CVT made it feel effortless in traffic. One quirk became famous: gently lifting the throttle at maximum speed allowed the rising manifold vacuum to push the pulleys to a slightly taller ratio, nudging the car fractionally faster — the only production car that could do so.

Roughly 30,591 examples were built before the 600 was replaced by the enlarged DAF 750 and the Daffodil series in 1963. The Variomatic architecture it introduced underpinned every DAF passenger car that followed, and its influence echoes in modern CVT systems from Honda, Nissan, and others.