The Volkswagen factory opens

Volkswagen aG counts nine brands within its corporate group, with 627,000 employees worldwide and annual sales of ¤217 billion. Its rise to power began with the opening of its factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, in May 1938.

Unlike other car manufacturers whose sole purpose was to sell vehicles for profit, Volkswagen was formed under a banner of Socialist automotive freedom for all… or so it was originally conceived.

In 1930s Germany, the cost of car ownership was prohibitive, with only one in 50 owning one. adlers, Mercedes and Horchs were pricey; even BMW’s range – starting with the Dixi – wasn’t cheap for the normal working family.

The National Socialist movement’s rise to power in 1933 under adolf Hilter was concerned with many things, but the millions of unemployed German Volk and their lack of motorisation seemed to be an early vote-winning priority. Hitler’s desire for a ‘People’s Car’ saw him ordering the production of a basic air-cooled vehicle capable of transporting two adults and three children and available to citizens of the Third Reich through a savings plan.

Because manufacturers baulked at being asked to build a car that would sell for an ultra-low price of 990 Reichsmarks, Hitler sponsored a new state-owned factory and used Ferdinand Porsche’s revised prototype Porsche Type 12 of 1932 (originally designed for Zündapp), which by 1938 had evolved to became the Volkswagen Type 1 with an Erwin Komenda-designed body (see page 162). It was called the KdF-Wagen – shorthand for Kraft durch Freude or ‘Strength through Joy’.

VW was created by the German Labour Movement in May ’36 as a new company and construction began on the VW factory in 1937 at a new town, ‘Stadt des KdF-Wagens’. This became modern-day Wolfsburg, a city purposebuilt for the workers, a Socialist utopia and the start of a manufacturing giant.