Edmund Rumpler


Edmund Elias Rumpler was an Austrian automobile and aircraft designer.
Born in Vienna, then Austro-Hungarian Empire, he worked mainly in Germany. An automotive engineer by training, he collaborated with Hans Ledwinka on the first Tatra car, the Präsident, in 1897.
By age 30, in 1902, he had quit Daimler to become technical director of Adler. He designed the first German engine to have engine and gearbox as a unit at Adler. The next year, he patented a swing axle rear suspension system.
The Wright brothers turned Rumpler's attention to aviation. He quit Adler in 1907, and in 1910, copying countryman Igo Etrich's Taube, Rumpler became the first ever aircraft manufacturer in Germany.
Rumpler continued to be interested in automobiles, and after the First World War, he applied aircraft streamlining to a car, building the Tropfenwagen in Berlin. A production model proved a sensation at the 1921 Berlin Auto Show. Rumpler's efforts produced a car with an astoundingly low Cw of only 0.28 ; the Fiat Balilla of the period, by contrast, was 0.60.
The Rumpler design inspired the 1923 Benz Tropfenwagen and Auto Union Grand Prix racers.
Rumpler's Tropfenwagen was not a commercial success, and only 100 Tropfenwagen were built, just two of which survive. Rumpler returned to aircraft.
Because Rumpler was Jewish, he was imprisoned after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, and his career was ruined, even though he was soon released. He died in Züsow Germany in 1940, and the Nazis destroyed his records.