While American innovators were experimenting with converting Ford trucks to four-wheel-drive as early as the 1910s, and largely for exploration or farming purposes, over in Europe there was a pressing need to convert to four-wheel-drive as many trucks as possible for the impending war. Enter DAF.

In the latest issue of the American Truck Historical Society's excellent publication, Wheels of Time, John Bodden wrote on DAF's late 1930s conversions of two-wheel-drive Ford and GM trucks into both four-wheel-drive and six-wheel-drive vehicles, mostly for the Dutch military, in what was possibly one of DAF's first moves away from building just the trailers that figure into the company's name and toward full vehicle production.

The four-wheel-drive conversions were aimed at retaining the Ford and GM front axles and suspensions, making the conversions less complicated and less expensive than contemporary conversions, which scrapped the axles and suspensions for entirely new setups. To do so, DAF engineers developed a transfer case, as normally used on four-wheel-drive conversions, but one with dual forward outputs – one aimed at each front wheel. Individual diagonal driveshafts then transferred power to bevel-drive gears that replaced each front hub.

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