SEIKEL celebrates 75 years of existence

January 24, 1949 was a decisive day in the life of Josef-Berthold Seikel: on this day he founded his company, which was initially dedicated to the sale and repair of NSU bicycles and later also motorcycles.

As a result of the merger of NSU with Audi and because Audi was later incorporated into the Volkswagen Group, SEIKEL developed into a well-known V.A.G workshop for Volkswagen and Audi vehicles, including a filling station from the 1960s onwards.

As early as 1968, the – by then – 19-year-old Peter Seikel, followed in his father’s footsteps after having completed an automotive apprenticeship at Mercedes and actively and dutifully supported his mother in everything: ordering spare parts, scheduling workshop appointments, at the filling station, in the car wash and in the workshop as a mechanic, as a boss among colleagues.

But at weekends, Peter Seikel devoted himself to his secret passion, motor racing. A few racing driver classes were soon followed by his first slalom and circuit races at the Nürburgring with NSU vehicles. Joining an international team was only a matter of time. In 1980, the team of “Peter Seikel, Manfred Trint, Willi Bergmeister, Hans-Joachim Nowak” won the European Touring Car Championship for marques with an Audi 80 Gr. II. One year after, Peter Seikel and Fred Rosterg achieved the only overall victory for AUDI in a European Touring Car Championship race to date in their Audi 80 GT Gr. II.

The next step included the foundation of his own racing team “SEIKEL Motorsport”. International endurance races around the globe now set the pace for the weekends. Several hundred races took place, many with very successful results.

At the top of Seikel Motorsport’s list of successes, with ten participations in the legendary “24 Hours of Le Mans”, is the triumphant class victory in the LMGT with a Porsche 911 RSR in 2001. To date, this success has not been repeated by any other private team!

In between and among other things, Peter Seikel traveled the Sahara several times, which he crossed as early as 1974 in a VW T1 bus. Accompanied and supported by „infected“ employees from the local company, it was possible to take part in several cross-country rallies as a private team: twice in the Paris-Dakar Rally, in 1988 with a VW LT 45 4×4. With the same car and in the same year, the team consisting of “Peter Seikel, Bernd Blos, Thomas Zimmermann” finished the Tunisie Rally with a great overall truck victory! In the following year, 1989, three major rallies in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt were successfully driven with a VW T3 16″ syncro Doka.

The experience gained in races and rallies flowed into the optimization of Volkswagen commercial vehicles, so that SEIKEL Service for normal Volkswagen and Audi vehicles quickly became an internationally recognized expert in off-road technology and motorsports.

After ending all motorsport activities in 2007, after exactly 40 years, Peter Seikel and his team are now fully dedicated to the off-road business.

With the philosophy of wanting to be technically better than others and with a good gut feeling for markets to be developed, Peter Seikel also stepped on the gas here. Technical innovative thinking, agility, speed, organizational talent and a highly motivated team brought the SEIKEL brand to its current status.

Technical milestones of SEIKEL:

  • Prototype development of the Caddy all-wheel drive, which was approved for series production by Ferdinand Piëch after a personal test drive
  • Development of a portal axle for the Volkswagen Transporter T5 and Volkswagen Amarok
  • Development of special T5 off-road accessories for the German Armed Forces, which led to the “Widder” model
  • Equipping Volkswagen support vehicles with SEIKEL components for use in the Dakar Rally in South America
  • SEIKEL becomes a Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles Premium Partner 
  • Certification of SEIKEL as official supplier for Volkswagen AG
  • Establishment of an international support network for the sale of SEIKEL products
  • Development of the first genuine off-road air suspension SEIKEL ProAir

Today, Peter Seikel and his daughter Susanne run the company together. Together with their experienced team, they are optimistic about the future for an innovative further development of off-road products for various vehicle brands.