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Volkswagen Car Company Porsche was a technical genius who loved to work with all sorts of technical problems and their solutions. Later in his life he was hired by a large number of car companies like Austro-Daimler, Mercedes, Daimler-Benz and Steyr before he opened up his own design bureau in 1930. He wanted to sell his ideas to most of the German car industry, and in 1932 he found a partner in Zündapp. The built three prototypes using Porsche's original design equipped with a new engine. The engine turned out to have a very bad cooling problem and melted after only ten minutes of running. Zündapp withdrew from the project and left Porsche to find a new partner. His projects were picked up by a company called NSU, a motor cycle maker who wanted to expand into the car market. The bad engine was forgotten and a completely new air cooled four cylinder engine was built. That engine was to be the predecessor of the flat four engines we know today. The new engine was placed in the back of the car in order to avoid the traditional and complicated transmission with a separate gear box problems. They made 3 prototypes called type 32 which were built and tested, but due to the economical climate in Germany at the time NSU withdrew from the. At that time, in 1933, on the Berlin Motor show the newly selected chancellor Adolf Hitler announced his plans to produce a small car that the German people could afford. When Porsche heard that Hitler had the same ideas as him he quickly arranged a meeting with him to see if they could become partners. At the meeting Hitler said he would sign a contract but there were certain things he wanted from the car. The car should be able to carry two adults and three children. Despite these hard and unrealistic demands Porsche accepted and the contract was signed by Hitler in 1934 stating the delivery of three prototypes within ten month. The prototypes were to be built by RDA (the German Auto Manufacturers Association). Even though Porsche had a great experience of building small cars a number of modifications were necessary mainly in order to meet the target price of 990 RM. When RDA saw that the project had a chance to be finished on time (and didn't want to see that happen) they deliberately started to hinder parts and work time to make him miss the deadline. With all this happening he did miss the deadline but Hitler could see what was happening and placed the whole project under government supervision. The three prototype cars were eventually delivered to Hitler in October 1936 and were called "W1". The next series of 30 cars built during 1937 was called VW 30. On the same year that the cars were made GeZuVor (Gesellschaft Zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagen, GmbH, the Group Planning the German Peoples Car, Inc.) was created and became the company that would make the car. The GeZuVor was a part of DAF (Deutsches Arbeiter Front, The German Workers Front) which was an organization receiving contributions from all workers and organized all kinds of family activities. A section called KDF (Kraft Durch Freude, Strength through Joy) got the task of selling the car now referred to as "KDF wagens". Between 1935 and 1937 a grand total of 50 prototype cars were built. They also tried a number of different engines but decided to go with the original flat designed by Franz Reimspeiss. That engine is still in use today. The prototype cars went through a rough test program in order to find weak areas. For example they had to withstand days of driving at full throttle runs on the German autobahns. Due to the tests they hired SS soldiers as test drivers since the test program lasted for so long. Hitler was there for the final design drawings and modifications. They made a further 44 Volkswagen prototypes in 1938 and another 50 in 1939 for demonstration and advertising purposes. The beetle now looked like we know it. The facilities to produce the Volkswagen car didn't exist, so Hitler decided to build a new town called KDF stadt just for this purpose of building the Beetle. It was founded in May 26 1938 and the production was supposed to start in September 1939, but in March 1939 World War II broke out. After the war the town was renamed Wolfsburg from Werner von Schulenberg of Wolfsburg who was made to give up his land to house the new factories. If a German family wanted to buy a Volkswagen Beetle the idea was to save for it by buying a 5 RM stamp each month and when you had enough of stamps 200 the car would be delivered to you. Because the war started the production of the Beetle was halted and 337.000 people who had paid for the stamps lost their money. They weren't compensated until 1961 after a German court awarded damages. A settlement was reach where they either got a check of 100 DM or a 600 DM discount when buying a new Volkswagen Beetle. The Volkswagen Beetle goes to war In order to keep the car alive Porsche designed a low cost military vehicle based on the beetle floor pan. The suspension was raised higher and was equipped with a limited slip diff for better tyre traction. The result was the type 82 bucket car and it became so popular that it captured ones got used by the allied soldiers. Volkswagen After the war Major Ivan Hirst was made as responsible for the factories by the British. He decided to start the production of the Beetle again since the war had created a big demand for a small car that was cheap and cheap to run. Over 2/3 of the factories had been destroyed by the bombings the workers under Hirst's leadership managed to build 58 cheap cars during the remaining of 1945, mainly from spare parts found in the rubble of the buildings. That impressed the British officers who quickly ordered 5.000 cars. In 1946 Volkswagen was ordered to produce 1.000 cheap family cars a month and in that year the total number of Volkswagen cars produced were 10.020. By now the company was officially named Volkswagen and the town it was produced in Wolfsburg. The first export took place in 1947 when a Dutch car dealer named Ben Pon bought five cars. (It was by the way Ben Pon who more or less was the driving force behind the development and introduction of the type 2 transporter that was introduced in 1949). The production kept growing and in 1955 Volkswagen was producing 1.000 cars a day. Volkswagens history: 1955, August 20. 1 million cars produced. Volkswagen Car Insurance ModelsBeetle Bora Caddy Camper Caravelle Corrado Golf Golf Plus Jetta Karman Lupo Passat Phaeton Polo Santana Scirocco Sharan Touareg Touran Vento |
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