Volkswagen was born out of the will of Adolf Hitler. It is known that during his imprisonment in 1924 he read books about Henry Ford’s story and he was deeply impressed. When he came to power in 1933 he did two things : 1) started the construction of the Autobahn super highway interconnecting the major cities in the country; 2) instructed Austrian Ferdinand Porsche to develop a mass production car for his people. He dreamed that every family would have this car in their garage, so named it "Volkswagen", or "People’s car" in English. The car were to be produced by NSU.
According to Hitler’s requirement, Porsche designed a rear-engined car with an air cooled flat four engine. Using air cool because the dictator thought his kingdom would soon expanded to the African desert. The car was not particularly advanced, but it was designed with care, especially taking into considering reliability, economy, ease of production and maintenance. Now we know this is the Beetle, or what the American describe as Bug.
n 1941, the great factory was built (out of the mandatory deposit from German people) and pilot run was completed. The broke out of WW II transformed the factory into an arsenal. The Volkswagen car was also modified to military vehicle which was really used in the North African desert. The road car was put into shelf until the war ended.
After the war, the district where the factory located came under British forces’ control. The British examined the car and was not very interested to produce it in their home country, so they helped the German to rebuild the factory and renamed there to Wolfsburg. (Today Wolfsburg is still the headquarters of VW and the factory is the biggest car plant in the world.) Under the scarce of resources, the German gradually increase the production and even export to the US, where it arose a fever.
The Beetle was produced through the 90’s (in Mexican plant) and resulted in a total of 21,000,000 units built, which broke Ford Model T’s record of 15,000,000.
So far our story seems like the history of Beetle. In fact, Volkswagen was simply a one model company until the 70’s. It tried to find a new design to replace the car but every time failed - the 1500 in 1961, the 411 in 1968 and the front-wheel-drive K70 in 1970. The hatchback Polo, which was based on Audi 50, relieved some pressure, but the declining sales of Beetle eventually drove the company into a loss in 1974.
Luckily, the same year launched the Giogiaro-designed Golf (American called it Rabit), a car that saved the company and became another core model in the following 25 years with 4 generations introduced. Today, Golf is still the best selling car in Europe.
For most time of its history, Volkswagen group remained to be a largely German company, as it consisted of VW and Audi only. Since the 80s it started going internationalize - Seat was bought in the mid-80s, Skoda in the early 90s, then in 1998 Ferdinand Piech bought 3 brands in a row: Lamborghini, Bugatti and Bentley.
Volkswagen was born out of the will of Adolf Hitler. It is known that during his imprisonment in 1924 he read books about Henry Ford’s story and he was deeply impressed. When he came to power in 1933 he did two things : 1) started the construction of the Autobahn super highway interconnecting the major cities in the country; 2) instructed Austrian Ferdinand Porsche to develop a mass production car for his people. He dreamed that every family would have this car in their garage, so named it "Volkswagen", or "People’s car" in English. The car were to be produced by NSU.
According to Hitler’s requirement, Porsche designed a rear-engined car with an air cooled flat four engine. Using air cool because the dictator thought his kingdom would soon expanded to the African desert. The car was not particularly advanced, but it was designed with care, especially taking into considering reliability, economy, ease of production and maintenance. Now we know this is the Beetle, or what the American describe as Bug.
n 1941, the great factory was built (out of the mandatory deposit from German people) and pilot run was completed. The broke out of WW II transformed the factory into an arsenal. The Volkswagen car was also modified to military vehicle which was really used in the North African desert. The road car was put into shelf until the war ended.
After the war, the district where the factory located came under British forces’ control. The British examined the car and was not very interested to produce it in their home country, so they helped the German to rebuild the factory and renamed there to Wolfsburg. (Today Wolfsburg is still the headquarters of VW and the factory is the biggest car plant in the world.) Under the scarce of resources, the German gradually increase the production and even export to the US, where it arose a fever.
The Beetle was produced through the 90’s (in Mexican plant) and resulted in a total of 21,000,000 units built, which broke Ford Model T’s record of 15,000,000.
So far our story seems like the history of Beetle. In fact, Volkswagen was simply a one model company until the 70’s. It tried to find a new design to replace the car but every time failed - the 1500 in 1961, the 411 in 1968 and the front-wheel-drive K70 in 1970. The hatchback Polo, which was based on Audi 50, relieved some pressure, but the declining sales of Beetle eventually drove the company into a loss in 1974.
Luckily, the same year launched the Giogiaro-designed Golf (American called it Rabit), a car that saved the company and became another core model in the following 25 years with 4 generations introduced. Today, Golf is still the best selling car in Europe.
For most time of its history, Volkswagen group remained to be a largely German company, as it consisted of VW and Audi only. Since the 80s it started going internationalize - Seat was bought in the mid-80s, Skoda in the early 90s, then in 1998 Ferdinand Piech bought 3 brands in a row: Lamborghini, Bugatti and Bentley.
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