Volkswagen and Adolf Hitler

A pal of mine had a VW in the late 60s and he always said it would float. The other thing I remember is the windscreen washers were powered by air pressure from the spare tyre - OK as long as you inflated it regularly otherwise you were in trouble if you needed to use the spare!

Tim

 

They seem to find the tiniest people to model for car ad illustrations

 

Dwarfs need to find work too.

 

Witness History - The Major and the VW Beetle - BBC Sounds

BBC audio: 9 mins.

"Released On: 06 Mar 2020
Available for over a year
The story of how a car that had originally been the idea of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was saved by a British army officer at the end of World War Two. In August 1945 the British Army sent Major Ivan Hirst to take control of the giant Volkswagen plant in Germany, built under the Nazis to produce 'people's cars' for the German masses. Ivan Hirst persuaded the British authorities to allow production to restart of the Volkswagen Beetle, which Hitler had had designed before the war as an affordable car for ordinary Germans and which would become one of the most successful cars in the world. Louise Hidalgo has been listening to archive of Major Hirst talking about that time. Picture: Major Ivan Hirst (right) driving the 1000th Beetle off the production line at Wolfsburg in March 1946 (Credit: Volkswagen AG)"

 

Initially it was the KdF-Wagen. A very rare specimen was the Typ 87 Kommandeurswagen, basically a 4x4 Schwimmwagen in disguise as ordinary Beetle

 

Soest/Westfalen
Google Maps

 

First production VW

 

Fascinating, my oma moved to the UK in the 50's and used to tell us her family never got their VW car from this. It's good to know they weren't the only ones!

 

Heritage from 1957 is a stretch, no?

Inline water cooled engine in front.
Automatic transmission
Sheetmetal from the late sixties at the earliest

 

That tracked vehicle is based on the VW Type 181 Kurierwagen from 1968, inofficially also known as the Bundeswehr Kübelwagen

This is a (half) tracked VW Type 82 Kübelwagen for comparison purposes: