Van Doorne's legacy: Automaker DAF, the CVT

Hub van Doorne overcame poverty and an elementary-school education to become one of the auto industry's foremost inventors and entrepreneurs.

The Dutchman's legacy includes founding truck and carmaker DAF and designing the first continuously variable transmission for a car.

Using his sharp mind and gifted hands, Van Doorne opened a machine shop in Eindhoven, southern Holland, on April 1, 1928.

Soon after, he started making lightweight trailers. The success of the trailers spurred him to rename the company Van Doorne's Aanhangwagenfabriek, or DAF, in 1932. Those three letters still fit when van Doorne changed the full name of his company to Van Doorne's Automobielfabrieken in 1949. The change coincided with the start of heavy-truck production at the expanded facilities in Eindhoven.

In 1958, DAF launched the 600, a low-priced small car equipped with van Doorne's Variomatic CVT.

At the start of the 1970s, van Doorne founded Van Doorne's Transmissie and started making steel belts for CVTs.

Series production of the belts began in 1985, six years after van Doorne's death. In 1995, supplier Robert Bosch took over the transmission maker, which last year produced its 10 millionth CVT belt.

DAF's car unit was sold to Volvo in 1975, and the truck division went to Paccar in 1996.