They're a product of the Born plant. Before the 40 series they built the 400 series there, before that the 300, and before that the 66, which is really a rebadged DAF.

Pretty small and tinny, but a fun car nonetheless. Transaxle RWD, a lot of them had CVT (driven by leather belts which had a propensity for breaking at some inopportune time).

DAF was the original owner/builder of the plant, and sold their passenger car division to Volvo in the 70's (maybe late 60's) and got out of the pax car business.

DAF is still a major manufacturer of trucks, and has at some point in the past decade bought / merged with Kenworth and Peterbilt, and of course they've been a major player with Leyland for a long time.

Come to think of it, that reminds me of another company. Niche player with pax cars, big in trucks, sells of pax cars to a bigger player. I'm trying to remember the name now. Something with a V I think...

Bram