10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT...
THE VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE
The Volkswagen Beetle was a worldwide phenomenon, a runaway success story that few could have predicted. We are making no attempt to condense its massive history down to just three pages, but we have been trawling the archives to select a few random bits of trivia that might entertain you.
The Beetle had originally been planned as a prestige project of the National Socialists, but from 1939 onwards the Wolfsburg plant had produced armaments instead of passenger cars. Up to the end of WW2, only 630 units of the model (which had been renamed the KdF-Wagen, or Kraft durch Freude – Strength through Joy – in 1938) had left the Volkswagen plant, none of them destined for the German public.
As a former armaments plant, the factory was scheduled for demolition after the war. However, following the liberation of the plant, the Americans had established a workshop there. When the British entered their zone of occupation in June 1945, they took over the trusteeship of Volkswagenwerk GmbH and assigned 28-year-old Major Ivan Hirst to Wolfsburg. ‘Initially,’ Ivan Hirst said, ‘my brief was very simple: go to Wolfsburg, find the factory and sit on it. They didn’t even say it was a Volkswagen factory.’
Hirst assumed responsibility as Senior Resident Officer and rapidly saw that the factory offered much greater potential than for use of the halls simply as a repair shop. Transport of any kind was in short supply in Germany at this time and the British wanted to use the Volkswagen Type 1 to perform urgently needed tasks within their occupation zone. They issued an order for 20,000 of them as early as August 1945, and it was largely this that protected the plant against impending demolition. Series production started on 27th December 1945.
For some years, the ownership of Volkswagen was unclear because in 1945, the previous owners – the Nazis’ Deutsche Arbeitsfront – had been dissolved. In some ways that helped prevent the factory’s sale abroad – because nobody owned it, nobody could sell it! But being in limbo had its downsides too, because it was impossible to raise credit. The company often resorted to bartering, and insisting on cash for its cars. On 8th October 1949, the British Military Government transferred the trusteeship of Volkswagenwerk GmbH to the German government, but not until July 1960 was the ownership finally cleared up by the Federal and State governments when Volkswagen was privatised, the two governmental tiers retaining 20% of the shares each.
In the ensuing years, there were so many high points and milestones that we can only scratch the surface here. We certainly can’t hope to give a model-by-model history in a feature such as this. What we can do is pick out a few little nuggets that appealed to our warped sense of interest, and hope they pique your interest too.
1 Around 630 KdF cars were built during the war, but none were ever delivered to members of the public who had been saving stamps for them. This resulted in a protracted legal case in the post-war period on behalf of the thousands of people who now had worthless savings books. The case lasted from July 1949 until October 1961, when a settlement was finally reached that allowed savers with a full book to claim DM600 off a new Beetle, and those with fewer stamps to receive a proportionally smaller discount. A total of 130,000 savers were registered, but it took another ten years for VW to fulfil the last of its obligations under the deal.
2 The first cars to be dismantled into individual parts and sent out as CKD (Completely Knocked Down) kits to be assembled overseas went to Ireland in 1950. This was followed by deliveries to South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Especially in South America, the assembly of CKD vehicles laid the foundation for the major production companies operating there, such as Volkswagen do Brasil or Volkswagen de México. Nowadays VW has 27 assembly locations in 10 countries. The largest CKD assembly plant is located in South Africa, where the Polo for all right-hand-drive markets is assembled. Full overseas production started in Brazil in 1953, Australia in 1957 and Mexico in 1964. There was talk of starting production in the USA in a former Studebaker factory, but the lack of competitive component supply and high labour costs meant it was cheaper to import completed cars, even though sales in the US often outstripped those in Germany.
3 The 1000th car was built in March 1946, the 100,000th in March 1950 and the 500,000th in July 1953. The magic million popped up in August 1955, followed by 2,000,000 in December 1957 and 15,000,000 in February 1972. In fact February 1972 had a much bigger claim to fame because on the 17th of that month, with 16,255,500 having been built in Germany and no fewer than 19,300,000 worldwide, the Beetle overtook the Model T Ford as the most successful car of all time. When it bowed out in 2003, a total of 21,529,464 Beetles had been built.
4 From 1952-1966, Volkswagen had explored no fewer than 70 designs as potential Beetle replacements. All featured air- cooling with the engine and transmission being housed in a unit, but beyond that the differences were many and varied, with engines reputedly ranging from an 800cc two- cylinder to a six- cylinder with two litres. None were felt to be better than the Beetle, and so all were binned.
5 The 20 millionth Beetle in May 1981 was celebrated with a special edition painted silver with black pinstripes. This was followed by further special editions with flashy paint jobs and sometimes seat trims too. The Red Velvet Beetle of 1984 had seats of red velvet and blue velour for example, while the Jeans Beetle of August 1973 featured Tunis Yellow paint and denim seats. (Not to be confused with the Jeans Bug of 1982 which was available in Alpine White or Mars Red.) There were also 3000 Jubilee Beetles to mark the end of German production in 1985, all of them Pewter Grey. But perhaps the most obscure was the Eggplant Beetle of 1983, which featured that colour on body, wheels, seats and interior trim. Eggplant? That’s aubergine to you and me – nice!
6 The 1302 of 1970 introduced some far-reaching changes, mostly at the front. These included a much larger front boot to accommodate a new front axle and MacPherson struts. At the back were semitrailing link suspension arms as had been used on the 1500. These changes added 2cm to the wheelbase, which was why the model was called the 1302. It was replaced by the 1303 from 1972-1975, featuring a wraparound screen that was moved further forwards in response to US safety legislation,