Fram King Fulda
Manufactured from 1956 to 1962 in Helsingborg, Sweden
Qty built: 411
Engine: Sachs 198cc, as used in the Messerschmitt KR200 Kabinenroller
In the lean years following WWII the need for cheap transportation was great. Late in the 1940s Norbert Stevenson of Germany constructed a simple three-wheeled machine and named it Fulda after the village where it was built.
The first prototype was ready 1950, with financial aid from a Bosch merchant, Karl Schmidt. The next prototype appeared in 1953 built using corrugated sheet-metal, later made more stylish using aluminum. The plastic variant did not appear until 1957.
In Sweden these three-wheeled cars could be driven with a motorcycle license, and as automobile driving licences were something of a rarity sales of the tiny roadsters were robust.
The Fulda company began selling licenses to produce the miniature coupé which was powered by a motorcycle engine. Some 2.000 Fuldamobils were built in Germany 1950-69, and many more in a number of other countries under different names.
In Sweden the Fram-King motorcycle company obtained rights in 1956 and planned to construct the model S-6 with an aluminium body on a wooden frame.
Fram employed one of the Fulda engineers, a German by the name of Adolf Sandler, who brought with him plans for the new S-7 model which employed a plastic (or fibreglass) body on a wooden frame. This design was improved before production began, with the wooden frame replaced by a monocoque plastic shell.
The Fram-King Fulda S7 is 3.2 metres long, 1.4 wide and 1300mm high, and weighs just 310 kilograms. It can carry two adults and two children. The 2-stroke 10hp two-stroke engine delivers a top speed of 80 km/h, with excellent fuel economy. It has a four-speed gearbox, and to select reverse the engine is stopped and restarted - running backwards! Whether anyone managed 80k's in top going backwards is unknown.
Between 1957 and 1962 411 S7-based models were made in Sweden. The base models were FKF (1957/58) and King (1959/60) and were sold using a variety of names for the variants. The FKF name was dropped at the insistence of SKF, and the King name adopted.
Initially the bodies were built by the only company in the country with the technical ability to vaccuum-press the plastic shells. That factory burnt down a year later, and a Danish company built the rest.
Note. Some accounts state that the S7 body was plastic, and others glass fibre. The KSE version speaks of vacuum forming which would indicate plastic of some description.
Source: Konditori
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