VW Beetle Celebrates Its 80th Birthday

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VW Beetle Celebrates Its 80th Birthday
VW Beetle Celebrates Its 80th Birthday

Video: VW Beetle Celebrates Its 80th Birthday

Video: VW Beetle Celebrates Its 80th Birthday
Video: VW Beetle 80th Anniversary 2024, March
Anonim

The first German million seller from German production is celebrating a milestone anniversary. The VW Beetle embodies a piece of German history in all its facets.

Wolfsburg will probably not celebrate the 80th birthday of the Beetle until next year, but the starting shot for the Volkswagen company was given on May 28, 1937. Back then, it was a perfect fit for the first production series of the rear-engine model developed by Ferdinand Porsche with its distinctive boxer sound the "Society for the preparation of the German Volkswagen mbH" was founded in Berlin, from which the "Volkswagenwerk GmbH" emerged.

The Wolfsburg-born man owes his nickname “Beetle” to the “New York Times”, which already called the first German million seller “Beetle” at its premiere. A car with the workers drove to the factory gate and general managers to the opera. At the beginning of June 1974 the last one rolled off the production line in Wolfsburg, 2003 saw the final for the Vocho in Mexico. The ambassador from Germany found almost 22 million customers.

Kübelwagen instead of beetles

It has never been easy for this car, also because its history embodies a piece of Germany. Volkswagen as a genre had already been around when Adolf Hitler called for a car to be built for a broad mass of the population at the 1934 Berlin IAA. The "Reich Association of the German Automobile Industry" (RDA) then commissioned the designer Ferdinand Porsche, who was already praised as ingenious at the time, with the development of a "Volkswagen" whose specifications included the following mandatory items: four seats, four to five liters of fuel consumption per 100 kilometers and a Vmax suitable for the motorway of at least 80 km / h.

The politically motivated and therefore not cost-covering price of 990 Reichsmarks for the small family car, the so-called KdF car, also made headlines-Saving system should make the 17 kW / 24 PS strong and 105 km / h fast 1.0-liter four-cylinder affordable. As early as 1938, 270,000 prospective buyers registered and participated with a minimum savings rate of five Reichsmarks per week.

It was a distribution system that, twelve months later, revealed itself to be a gigantic deception of all those willing to buy Beetles. Because of the total of 268 million Reichsmarks saved, the National Socialists financed the construction of the Volkswagen plant in the specially founded city of Wolfsburg, and a not inconsiderable part flowed into the state budget - and finally, instead of the Beetle, Kübelwagen were manufactured for use in the war.

Beetle as a symbol of the economic upswing

In 1955, the one millionth Beetle rolled off the assembly line
In 1955, the one millionth Beetle rolled off the assembly line

After the end of the Second World War and the subsequent reconstruction, the Beetle not only advanced to become a symbol of the economic upswing, it gave people back their belief in reliability through mechanical reliability - no boiling cooling water and no piston seizures - and its continuity in design.

A nimbus that the Volkswagen brand was able to maintain until the current diesel scandal. No matter how rapidly the world was changing, Volkswagen had the legendary advertising slogan: “You know what you have”. This is exactly what made the Beetle the most feared German export item.

VW Golf ushers in the end of the Beetle

The VW Beetle in the film version as Herbie
The VW Beetle in the film version as Herbie

Feared by competitors who fought the crawly animal with “beetle killers”, ie their own compact models, mostly in vain. While in Germany this was mainly the more modern Ford Taunus 12M and Opel Kadett, in the USA specially created compacts by the Big Three GM, Ford and Chrysler tried to contain the supposed beetle plague. Hard to believe after “Diesel-Gate” today, but in 1970 Volkswagen gained a market share of over seven percent in the USA. In 1972 the Beetle's ultimate triumph over US corporations followed: With the 15,007,034th Beetle, VW cracked the previous record of the Ford Model T.

With the original Beetle, the VW 1302 and 1303 from 1972 only had the concept and the silhouette of the body in common, as there were 78,000 changes over the years. Still, evolution was no longer possible, so a revolution was needed. The hour of golf had come. With the license plate front-wheel drive and large tailgate, this then established the compact class as a new classless mega-seller. (SP-X)

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