The Volkswagen Kaefer, or “Beetle/Bug”  that we know today was the brainchild of the famous auto designer Ferdinand Porsche. Without Porsche, there would have been no Volkswagen, no “bug” and no military “Kübelwagen”.

Porsche was born in 1875,and produced his first automotive design In 1900. The Porsche-Lohner Chaise was powered by hub-mounted electric motors that drove the front wheels and apparently lasted for 5 miles before being recharged. Later designs worked on what he termed the mixed fuel principle, using a small internal combustion engine that generated electricity to power the car, but eventually, he accepted more conventional drive methods.

As his career progressed, Porsche soon proved himself a hard worker and a designer of some genius. Here was a man who knew his own mind, though unfortunately, his ideas and plans for the automobile industry were not often shared by his employers. Having come from a working class background, his natural affiliations were less with the bosses and financiers as the workers. His first senior Job, at Austro-Daimler, lasted 18 years and earned him eventual promotion to managing director, yet he resigned in 1923 after a board room row over cutbacks in the work force. And when he went to the German Daimler company as technical director, another row caused a second resignation, though for different reasons.

Fresh employment was not long in coming and the post of technical director with the Steyr company in Austria was his next appointment. He began on New Year's Day 1929 with a fresh enthusiasm, but the Wall Street Crash and its attendant far-reaching consequences led to a merger between Steyr and Daimler-Benz to create Steyr-Daimler-Puch. Porsche was suddenly back where he had been two years earlier. The new company immediately dropped his new projects and yet another resignation followed. This time, however, he knew what to do. Although Ferdinand Porsche was now 55 years of age, he set up shop at 24 Kropenstrasse, Stuttgart in December 1930, forming his own design consultancy. Porsche was a man always destined to be his own boss the only surprise was that it had taken him so long. To give his business the all-round technical expertise it needed, he made sure that certain key people were with him, people he had worked with and grown to respect using his long years in the motor industry. Under the new order, Porsche was to lay down the ideas and rough concepts, while the rest of the team filled In the details and made it work. His colleagues included Josef Kales, an air-cooled engine specialist; Karl Frohlich, a transmission expert; Karl Rabe, who had been his chief engineer at Austro-Daimler; Josef Zahradnlk for axle and steering design, and Josef Mickl, his aerodynamics adviser. Mickl at 45 was the oldest member of the team and Ferry Porsche, Ferdinand's son, was the youngest at 21. For a short time, there was also a business manager by the name of Adolf Rosenburger but as a Jew, he was forced to flee the country in 1933.

Although It was at this time that Porsche began to lay down the basic parameters for what would become the Volkswagen Beetle, it as very much an evolutionary design. Each subsequent attempt at the same concept produced a better car which was better engineered, more reliable and better looking than the last. To begin with, however, the Porsche consultancy were concerned with smaller matters; a crankshaft here, a rear axle there. One of their early triumphs was to patent 'Spring Suspension of Independent Car Wheels, especially for Motor Vehicles' - basically a torsion bar design, from which the Porsche company has drawn royalty payments ever since. It was not until 1931 that work began on the first of the Volkswagen prototype series, though the design was barely recognizable as a Beetle. The Beetle as we know it was still some 15 years away and even then the path towards it would be long and very winding.

With work slow in coming (at one point Porsche even borrowed on his life assurance to pay the men), the company had decided to produce some plans on a purely speculative basis. One of these projects was the Type 12, a small car suited to the economic depression. Fortunately,they quickly found a customer when Porsche went to see the Zündapp motorcycle company under Dr Fritz Neumayer,who wanted to diversify into the car market. Neumayer, however, insisted upon a five-cylinder water-cooled radial engine and because they needed the work, Porsche agreed to it.

Despite this ludicrous engine choice, the design was still of some interest. Although it might have been considered unorthodox in terms of contemporary schemes In the USA or Britain, it was not so odd compared to some of its European counterparts. A backbone chassis carried all-Independent suspension with a transverse-leaf spring at the front and a swing axle at the rear. The Type 12 had hydraulic brakes (incredibly. The Beetle 1200 Standard did not get them until 1964) and all the controls ran through a central chassis member much as they would on the Beetle. there were other similarities too, mainly for weight saving reasons. the rear-mounted engine meant no heavy drive-shaft.

Three prototypes - two sedans and one cabriolet - were built with bodies by Reutter. And for someone who had designed some of the most beautiful sports cars ever seen, this new design was definitely an odd one. The windshield was sharply raked, there were rear wheel arch spats, no running boards, and the back of the car arched right over In a giant arc. This though was the birth of the Beetle shape.

Needless to say, the car was not a success. the engine over heated so severely that on one test, the engine oil actually boiled and welded the pistons to the cylinder walls. In the end, Neumayer's enthusiasm and his money ran out. 1932 quickly developed into a miserable year for Porsche. At one point, he seriously considered a 'blank check' offer to work in Moscow. But another small car opportunity was waiting round the corner.

Baron Fritz von Falkenhayn,head of the NSU plant at NeckarsuIm, asked Porsche to design another light car suited to the prevailing hard times. What followed, the type 32,was just that and the next link in the beetle story. Type 32 was also designed around a backbone chassis, but for the first time it was forked at the rear to carry the engine and transaxle arrangement. In addition, the front suspension used two of Porsche's patented torsion bars crossed transversely at the front with friction-type shock absorbers. The engine was a very Beetle-like oversquare 1470cc air cooled history and was proved good for 75mph with no problems except excess noise. The bodies were designed by Erwin Komenda - still quite odd-looking but strangely futuristic for 1932,especially when compared with what Ford were producing In the early 1930s. Incredibly, one of the three original prototypes still survives in the VW museum, a steel-bodied version by the Drauz company of Heilbronn. The other two, by Reutter, another well-known coach builder, had fabric bodies with large, high-hinging trunk lids. Sadly, it was the steel-bodied car that caused the downfall of the whole project, simply because Fiat were also based at Heilbronn. Hearing about the new NSU car, Fiat reminded them of certain contractual obligations arising from their purchase of the old NSU car factory. As part of the deal, NSU had agreed never to make cars under their own name again. Once again Porsche was without a sponsor for the Volksauto (people's car) project. What it needed was a backer with a lot more cash and a lot more vision. What it got was Adolf Hitler.

When Hitler took power communications were high on his list. here was the Volksradio project, which took his propaganda into every house in Germany; the Volksauto,to get the country mobile; and the giant autobahn program to make travel quicker and simpler for everyone (especially his troops).

How Hitler got to hear of Porsche's project was quite simple. An old friend from Daimler-Benz, Jakob Werlin, happened to call into the Porsche offices soon after NSU had pulled out, and was naturally told about the little Type 32. Werlin happened to be close to Hitler at this time and saw this as a way of earning favor with the Fuhrer. So Hitler was told of the project and Porsche was driven to the Kaiserhof Hotel, Berlin to meet both Hitler and the Auto Union directors. Nazi propaganda also required that type 30, type 32s dominate the race tracks in the mid-193Os and few people knew more about car design than Ferdinand Porsche, especially after his experience with the giant supercharged Mercedes. As it happened, Hitler knew quite a lot about cars himself, as is evidenced by some of his correspondence on the matter he even gave Porsche some drawings of what he had in mind for the 'people's car', suggesting that it should be a four-seater family car with an air-cooled engine of one liter capacity. it should use only seven liters of gasoline per 100km and be able to maintain 100km per hour.

Hitler persuaded the RDA (Reichsverband der Deutschen Automobilindustrie, the car manufacturers trade organization) to put Porsche under contract to develop the new state financed car, even though they clearly saw it as a threat to their own business. Porsche was given around 23 ,000 Reichmarks to build the prototypes, but he was allowed only ten months not the full year he had requested, and his projected build and sell price of RM 1550 was slashed to a little over RM 900.

Designated Type 60, the new car carried many of the type 32's features. Hitler had actually seen the plans himself by this time and even changed them a little, lowering the front hood contour to give it extra streamlining. After the allotted ten months, the cars were far from finished. The Idea was that the other type30, type32 manufacturers would help Porsche produce the prototypes, but they didn't; jealousy still played a strong part in motor car design and manufacture. As the Porsche premises were only geared to design work, they built the cars in Porsche's own garage in Stuttgart. Then only consolation was that at last they were building the car they wanted. The had the backing and the apparently unlimited funds of the state; and a very sympathetic client, even if he was Adolf Hitler .

By the end of 1935 they had two cars testing in the Black Forest, a sedan and a cabriolet. The design was a natural progression from the previous Types 12 and 32. Once again, the chassis was formed around a central backbone rounded at the top like the later Beetle, with a flat underside and wooden floorboards, which were later replaced by metal. It narrowed towards the front, where the central spine continued forward to clamp on to the twin torsion bars that formed the front suspension. the pedals sprouted out of the central spine just behind a small bulkhead and the battery tray was pressed into the rear of the pan under the back seat. The transmission was mounted on a cradle bolted between the two chassis forks and the engine hung off the back of the transmission. Rear suspension took the form of twin transverse torsion bars hidden in the rear cross member with links to the rear hubs via a pair of thin blade-like radius arms. They had to a thin because they needed to flex for the suspension to work properly.

Engines were many and various. In fact with endless engine trials taking so long Porsche was granted a further 12 month's development time. Each new design was designated a letter and it was up to E before the found one that did a good job at the right price. The A-Motor (a two stroke) was rejected mainly because two-strokes didn't provide enough engine braking. The C Motor was a sleeve-valved air-cooled twin and the D Motor, designed by an engineer named Engelbrecht, was very like a noisy motorbike engine. Eventually they came up with the E-motor which by now was starting to look like a proper Beetle engine. The generator mount, ront pulley, large heads, single wire mesh oil filter and distributor were all later Beetle engine features.

The body design was also evolutionary. The headlamp were mounted separately on the hood not on the fenders, it had vent windows and in line with Hitler's ideas for the car (he was financing it, after all),they lowered the hood line. The doors were of 'suicide' type they hinged at the rear but the most striking aspect of the car's design was its lack of rear window.

Two cars were built at first, a sedan (V1),coach built by Reutter and a cabriolet (V2) by Drauz. But a further three were soon commissioned and designated VW3,the first of which was finished in early 1936 and again differed slightly. They were built by Daimler-Benz,indicating that other German manufacturers recognized that Hitler was not a man to be disobeyed.

Strangely the car featured many of the classic Beetle body mouldings curves and lines, but the hood and trunk cut right across them. The doors didn't open right down to the bottom of the body, either,leaving a strange sill effect and the fenders looked cut off at the ends,like some latter day off-road racer. The hood opened from just below the screen line to a point about two-thirds down the nose, while at the rear the engine lid came right up the back of the car with a row of giant louvers.

It was that engine that stood out, though. A new member of staff, an Austrian designer by the name of Franz Reimspiess, joined the company in 1934 and almost immediately suggested a new four-cylinder engine every bit as cheap to produce as the two-cylinder design but producing far better results. A lightweight magnesium alloy crankcase, cast iron crank, overhead valves, aluminum cylinder heads and a very short camshaft with just four lobes to actuate the eight pushrods, were all aspects of the Motor's design.

By late 1936 the three VW3 prototypes were given to the RDA for extensive testing. They even re-engined the original V1 and V2 prototypes as Further test beds for the new engine. And the tests were strenuous, with two drivers covering over 400 miles a day over the Alps and the Black Forest new autobahn stretches. The results were worth it though, as a total of 50,000 miles of testing proved what the design could and could not do. The cast-iron crankshaft was the biggest problem, as its repeated failure later led to the adoption of a forged steel unit. But other problems included broken shift levers and the electric fuel pump,which was soon swapped For a mechanical one. Despite reservations regarding the cable brake and the front suspension design, the RDA's report, published at the end of 1937, gave Type 60 the go-ahead.

At the same time, Hitler decided that the whole project should be state funded through the German Labor Front (DAF),Hitler's state-run replacement for the banned trade unions. In reality however, this meant the German people themselves, as DAF funds comprised confiscated trade union funds and compulsory contributions of 1.5 percent of each worker's income. the Society for the Development of the German Volkswagen was formed in May 1937 and RM 500,000 was put forward for more prototypes.

The Series 30 (because 30 were built) cars were all put together by Daimler Benz. The front of the car was particularly beetle like with head lamps mounted on the front fenders and that characteristic hood line sloping right down to the nose of the car. Around the back, though, that unmistakable W shape that would become one of the early Beetle's most striking features, did not finish at the top of the engine cover, but continued over the roof, opening right out towards the corners of the front screen. The engine cover itself was now punched with massive louvres to give the engine as much cool air as possible. Mechanically, the Series 30 cars followed the VW3. A change in compression ratio to 6:1 and a new oil cooler making up the engine modifications, while new split-leaf torsion bars at last stopped them snapping and depositing the car on the tarmac without the slightest warning.

If the VW3 was extensively tested, the Series 30 tests went to the limits of endurance. At an estimated cost of RM 30 million,200 soldiers from the SS were drafted in to drive each car at least 50,000 miles over a variety of terrains. Ferry Porsche oversaw the operation.

All that was left was to finalize the styling. The job was given to Erwin Komenda and by 1938 the design was set. A Few details were cleared up at this point,like making the door hinge In the right direction, changing the hood so that it hinged right at the top, and fitting bumpers and hubcaps for the first time, too. But It was the rear that saw the real modifications as they shortened the engine cover, introduced the famous pretzel (because it looks vaguely like a German pretzel biscuit) or split rear window and fed the engine with air through a row of vertical louvers that sat beneath it. Forty-four of these new Series 38 cars were put together or further approval and testing.

When it came to ideas for actually getting Hitler's new car into production, the RDA began by suggesting various schemes, which said little except the fact that they weren't really interested. Their suggestion was that the existing type30,type32 manufacturers would share the burden of production, which would involve the government in a subsidy to the tune of RM 200 for each car. Hitler obviously worked out the cost of his projected production (a million cars a year) and decided that it would be cheaper to build his own factory instead.

Following the lead of most of the giant car plants of the time, the prime requirement was access to a navigable waterway. As the factory would literally take iron ore in one end and throw cars out at the other, they needed to be able to ship the raw materials and finished cars quickly and easily. It would even have its own power station, serving a new town as well as the factory. Hitler's choice was the village of Fallersleben on the banks of the Mittelland Canal. The site itself formed part of the 14th century estate of Schloss Wolfsburg, owned by Count von Schulenburg; needless to say, while he wasn't too happy about it, he had no chance of objecting to the plans himself and supporters were few and far between.

Like Ford's recently-built (1931) Dagenham plant in Britain the Volkswagen factory would also have its own town where the workers would live. The car would be called the KdF-Wagen (Kraft durcn Freude - Strength through Joy) and the town would be called KdF-Stadt. Officially, KdF as the leisure section of the DAF, its funds helping to finance bargain holidays for the workers, but in reality they were just misappropriated by the Nazis. Filled with the best American equipment and a large number of repatriated, US-trained workers, the major part of the factory was finished n early 1939. They needed the best of everything because right from the start, targets were high. Production was scheduled at 150,000 vehicles in 1940. building up to 1.5 million in two years. The car was available in only one color, a bluish gray and there was only one method of purchase.

1940 - 1950 — WW-II

The factory that had promised so much. gave forth so little. Once Hitler had decided to extend Germany's borders, all vital resources were re directed to the war effort and the factory was still not complete by 1940.

The plant had been operational, but only just. By the time it moved over to wartime production, total KdF-Wagen production stood at 210 units but they had all gone to high-ranking Nazis. The first, predesignated Type 1, left the factory on 15 August 1940, and although production was kept up to provide much needed wartime transport, only 630 KdF-Wagens had been built by 1944. The factory was not idle, of course. In addition to cars, it was producing a host of other things including, at one time, 1.5 million primitive stoves for the German troops at the Russian front. Unfortunately, there were also V1 flying bombs and assorted parts for Junkers 88 bombers, which is why the factory itself was bombed by the Americans towards the end of the war.

The fact that the basic Beetle design had certain military possibilities had not escaped the army. In fact, one of the Series 30 chassis had been loaned to the army to have a gun and three seats fined. It was hardly surprising then, that even before war had broken out, Porsche was asked to adapt the KdF-Wagen for use by the German army. In 1938, Franz Reimspiess designed a sort of cross-country vehicle, based on the KdF-Wagen floorpan with 19 inch wheels and not much at all in the way of bodywork. This rough design was rethought in 1939 and later after German tests at the very start of the war with Poland. The job of producing the Type 82 or Type 2, as it was labeled, was given to Ferry Porsche and the resulting car became known as the Kübelwagen or 'Bucketcar'.

The Kübelwagen went into production on 21 December 1940, but it was some time before the car was officially approved for use by the German army. By the end of that year, total production stood at 1000 and by the end of the war, around 50,000 had appeared from the Wolfsburg factory.

The Kübelwagen featured a KdF-Wagen-type chassis with the stock 985cc, 22.5hp engine and modifications for improved ground clearance. There was a change to the 1131cc, 25hp engine in March 1943. The bodies were supplied by Ambi-Budd in Berlin and the chassis were assembled in one area of the Wolfsburg plant. The simple ribbed body with its folding windshield and canvas top came with four doors, the front pair hinging at the back so they all swung off the same center pillar. Exterior features included two front towing hooks and twin fender-mounted headlamps with canvas covers, while a spade, black-out light and spare wheel were mounted right on top of the hood, which did not open and had no facility for storage, except for a five-gallon spare fuel can which slid into a specially tailored hole just above the pedal assembly. The proper fuel filler was just behind the spare wheel. Lastly, as the vehicle's lighting had to be geared to wartime, it included an ingenious rear light system with differing thicknesses of green plastic, enabling the driver to judge distance from the Kübelwagen in front by the number of lights that were visible.

The interior was no more than basic. In front were small individual bench seats that looked more like fold up picnic chairs covered in a lightly padded canvas. Rear seating took the form of a simple bench, and for added military discomfort the air intake for the engine bay was right behind the rear seat. so quite what it sounded like with the top up and side curtains closed. one can only imagine.

The improved ride height was achieved in the most ingenious manner. At the front, Porsche changed the design of the spindle slightly so that the wheel sat lower in relation to the two trailing arm And at the back they used a reduction gear system at the end of each swing axle, which had the added benefit of allowing the vehicle to drive at a walking pace. This reduction gear system later resurfaced on the Volkswagen Microbus some years with the many and varied tasks of military life, there was naturally more than one version of the Kubelwagen. Others included one that carried an air siren, one with a heavy-duty chassis and a dummy tank body for training purposes, a pickup version, a tropical delivery van, a snow caterpillar with half-tracks and one that was specially modified to run on railway tracks. There were even six four wheel drive prototypes. As the war continued and Rommel began to penetrate North Africa, they designed a special model for use in desert conditions with protected electrics, extra cooling equipment and a larger air filter. fortunately for the Allies, an organizational muddle sent these special KubeIs to the Russian front while Rommel had to make do with ordinary ones, though they were at least equipped with special tires.

Extra protection or not, the Kübelwagen with its rear-mounted air cooled engine was a formidable desert performer. Captured German Kubels were so popular with the Allied troops that the exchange rate became one Kübelwagen for two jeeps. And another story goes that a captured example, returned to Britain and dismantled for inspection, had 100lbs of sand removed from inside the body shell with the car still going strong.

If the Kübelwagen provided the German Army with basic everyday transport, the other high-volume wartime product from Wolfsburg did quite the opposite. Although it could easily trek across rough terrain, the fact that it was also amphibious was more than just a small bonus. In actual fact, the Schwimmwagen was so comfortable in the water that the Weapons Bureau seriously suggested that it should be fitted with colored navigation lights for port and starboard sides, The Schwimmwagen was really just a sealed steel tub on wheels. There were obviously no doors but like the Kübelwagen, it came with a folding canvas top. blackout light and hood mounted spare wheel. Apart from a few added exterior trappings like a paddle and a spade, the main giveaway, was the externally mounted propeller, hinged just below the engine lid, The propeller was raised and lifted with a detachable rod that extended right over the back of the car. It was stored above the exhaust muffler, which was high above the water level but also just behind the rear passengers ears. The louvered engine cover incorporated a cutout for the propeller when it was in the raised position, and once lowered, it located automatically in a three-dog spline fitting, driven by the crankshaft. The engine air intake was obviously high out of the water but right below the muffler, so quite how it performed with a constant supply of nice hot air is another matter.

Like the Kübelwagen, the Schwimmwagen came in a number of different configurations The earliest version, the Type 128 began with the 984cc engine, but later versions all came with the bigger 1131cc engine (increased bore by 5mm to 7Smm), 25hp engine. The German Waffenamt (the weapons department) had set 25hp as the basic minimum military requirement. The Type 138 followed and eventually the Type 166, the most sophisticated model, with a shorter wheelbase and low weight, which was soon regarded as the hot rod Schwimmwagen, most of them going straight to the SS.

Not only could these cars swim, but they also came with four-wheel drive. The transmission was interesting in that it worked normally in two-wheel drive until fifth gear was engaged, though some bought in four-wheel drive with a second small lever behind the gear shift. It is interesting to note that Schwimmwagenss had two fuel tanks with fillers in the hood plus another filler for the front axle pressure lubrication system (to overcome water immersion). Going flat out, the Schwimmwagen was good for 55 MPH on dry land and just over 6 mph in water. That the Schwimmwagen was indeed, waterproof was proved on many occasions by British officers at Wolfsburg after the war. Apparently, the practice was to drive the Schwimmwagen off the landing wharf straight into the Mittleland Canal at 40mph. The car would belly flop into the water, bob about on the surface and cruise back to the jetty.

In the end, some 14,238 Schwimmwagens were built both at the Wolfsburg factory and at Porsche's small facility in Stuttgart before the end in 1944.

Kubel and Schwimmwagens were not the only wartime Wolfsburg products, of course. Throughout the war, Porsche and his design team were busy producing designs for all sorts of military hardware. Others include the Type 82E, the Type 92 Kommandeurwagen and the Type 87 Leichte Kavallerie model, all of which combined the Beetlish body of the KdF-Wagen with one of the Kubel's high-riding chassis. The Type 87 was probably the most interesting as it used an experimental four wheel drive Kubelwagen chassis. Quite a number were built, as production totalled 34 in 1942, 382 in 1943, 151 in 1944 and just two in 1946. These last two even incorporated a roller at the nose to help them over lumps in the ground.

From April until August 1944. the Volkswagenwerk was subjected to a number of daylight air raids by US bombers. A mystery pilotless British bomber crashed into the plant on 29 April, but it is presumed that it was pure chance that it hit the factory at all. By the end of the war, attacks had totally flattened a large part of the plant. Floor area rendered totally unusable amounted to 33.8 percent, over 20 percent of the machinery was wrecked and a large part of the roof was brought down. Although the company claimed that only 60 percent of the factory was destroyed, what was left was hardly the basis for the production of anything, let alone cars. Production was revived, but output was slow at only a quarter of the previous average and did not last for very long either.

The plant at Fallersleben liberated by the American army on 10-11 April 1945. Knowing that the US Army was close, however, the guards fled, leaving the workers, most of them foreign prisoners of war, to run riot. They wrecked most of the machinery and burned nearly all the records. Fortunately the Germans had taken the precaution of packing many of the key machinery pads in crates and stowing them in electrical conduit pipes under the factory floor. These would prove invaluable to the British who were to take plant and the administration of its remaining staff. Partly because the had nowhere else to go, and partly because the British at least had a little food to offer, some workers stayed on and another 522 Kubelwagens were produced between August and December that year. The war was over, but the problems at Wolfsburg had hardly begun.

By the end of the war, Porsche's dream must have looked less likely than ever. The postwar division of Germany into individual political zones had placed the Fallersieben factory under British control, out there still remained the question of what to do with it. Six successful bombing raids had left the factory all but wrecked and what machinery they had left was beginning to rust away. The whole place was inches deep in water , since there was no roof on most of the factory. Added to this, there were few staff and very little accommodation for them anyway, so the immediate call for the place to be pulled down and rebuilt elsewhere is understandable. An unexploded bomb nearly settled the factory's fate: found wedged between the two main generators of the power station, had it exploded, there is o doubt that it would have meant the final dismantling of the Wolfsburg plant and certainly no more Volkswagen cars. The fact that the factory picked itself up and got back to work was not so much through any grand plan, but more likely because there was nothing else to do.

When the British took over from the Americans In the early summer of 1945, they were quick to take advantage of what resources there were by in-stalling a REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) maintenance and repair shop in one part of the factory buildings. They renamed it the 'Wolfsburg Motor Works, and the few German worker that remained at the plant began to fix the machinery back together and even managed to produce two complete cars from the one surviving sheet metal press. One of these first postwar cars was immediately dispatched to the local British Army headquarters and incredibly, solicited an order for more. To Major Ivan Hirst, the plant's commanding officer, this was tacit approval of the job they had managed to do at Wolfsburg and he took it as the go-ahead to make operational as soon as possible.

With typical military efficiency, the first thing the British did was to introduce a model number system to correctly identify the assorted models. The old KdF-Wagen was the Type 1, the Kübelwagen Type 2, and the Kubel chassis with the KdF-Wagen sedan body was the Type 5, In addition, there was a second digit which Identified the actual body type: sedan was 1, convertible was 2 and soon.

It may have been comprehensive, but it was also wishful thinking at the time, because with no parts or raw material, finished cars were a rarity. Production did build up for a while in June, July and August as they used up what remaining parts they had. For a short time, they were still supplied with Kübelwagen bodies from Ambl-Budd in Berlin, but this ceased once Berlin became part of the Russian sector. Actual production figures read 138 Kubelwagens in June 1945, increasing to 235 in July a d another 136 in August. By September rough parts were probably used up, as only 11 made it out of the factory that month; in December total Kübelwagen production had fallen to one a month, and in February 1946 the last example left the plant.

There was much more to do than just build cars, though, In 1945, the whole area was filling up with refugees from the East, most of whom were fleeing the Russian sector (what would eventually become East Germany). By the end of 1945 there were around 6000 workers at Wolfsburg, half engaged in the manufacture of what vehicles they could, the rest just clearing up the mess, attempting to patch some temporary covering over the roof and generally just trying to turn a mile long pile of rubble, into a car plant. While so many workers was obviously a good thing, their sheer numbers brought further problems. Food and decent living accommodation were every bit as rare in Germany as raw materials for the plant t. British army trucks brought coal for the generators, but because the rest of Europe was experiencing exactly the same problem, the only way to get what was wanted was to barter for it. Most of the time, they were building cars just to trade for the materials to build more cars.

Production wasn't limited to the Kubelwagen either. Using the old KdF sedan body on the Kubelwagen chassis, the Type 51 started to appear in August 1945, presumably as the supply of Kubelwagen bodies dried up. By the end of that first year, as many as 703 Type 51s had been built along with 713 Type 93 closed trailers, 275 Type 83 sedan-based closed delivery vans and 219 Type 28 Kubelwagen-based closed deliveries. When It came to the ordinary Type saloons, only 58 appeared that year, most of them built in December.

Setting the style for a further 36 million Beetles, those first, lonely few came with some very Interesting features, For a start there were new vent windows; in fact they didn't appear until October 1952 on the Export model. At the rear, there was still the famous 'pretzel' split rear window wit the large vertical air vents beneath it, while the rear engine cover featured tat classic W-shaped moulding and a small combined stop and license plate light. The rear lights, which were to undergo many a change over the Beetle's 35 year -history, began as tiny round units to fit the curvature of the rear fenders.

Compared with the cars of even a year or two later, the Beetles came with very little in the way of interior comfort. Simple plain cloth-covered seats were lightly padded with horsehairs, while the hardboard door panels were covered in leather cloth. A spindly black three-spoke steering wheel with its central horn button sat in front of the simplest of
dashboards. It comprised two central panels in relief, one housing the speedometer, the other just embossed with the circular VW logo, Optimistically reading to 120km per hour, the speedo had the Ignition switch directly beneath it and two nicely shaped knobs either side. A further knob, in the center of the dash worked the semaphore turn signals. Even at these early stages, the car came with heating, piped through a single heat exchanger on the back of one of the exhaust pipes to a single outlet in the front bulkhead on the driver's side, At the time, Volkswagens were available only in a blue gray, the original non--committal KdF color. There were special colors for the military however. The British Army had some in green, the Coal Board had black, the RAF and US Army sedans were gray and the Russians were allowed a few in maroon.

Those Russian cars count as among the first exported Volkswagens, the only others being the few that were taken home by foreign servicemen and a trainload commandeered by the French in 1946. Apparently the British had to entertain Soviet officers while their 50 drivers were taught to drive outside!

There was no chrome work on those early cars so the bumpers with their little overriders were usually black. The 'nipple type' hubcaps (the center bulge to clear the hub center nut) were also painted.

On the mechanical side, the first Beetles used the l13lcc motor from the -wartime Schwimmwagen, From a bore and stroke of 75 and 64m and a compression ratio of 5.8:1, the flat four developed 25 h at 3300rpm. It was built around a two-piece crankcase with bolt-on finned barrels and a centrally mounted camshaft, gear driven directly off the forged steel crankshaft, which sat above it. The pushrods ran in separate tubes to the aluminium alloy heads. The distributor was also driven off a gear on he end of the crankshaft, while the generator was mounted on a pedestal, cast-in as part of the crankcase. The other end of the generator was connected to the all-important upright engine cooling fan.

The very earliest KdF-Wagens came with a cylindrical fuel tank under the bonnet, but this was soon changed for an 8-gallon rectangular version. The reserve fuel lever, hidden away in the passenger footwells (it was later centralised) allowed access to the last gallon of gasoline through an ingenious dual-level tap device at the bottom of the tank, Gasoline was supplied to the engine through a mechanical fuel pump into a small carburetor, which until the war had always been a downdraft Solex, but as Solex were in Berlin (the Russian sector) after the war, they lost supply until April 1950. The home-built unit comprised a body and float chamber made at the factory from die-cast aluminium, with the smaller parts coming from the German camera makers. Exhaust gases exited from both ends of each cylinder head into a small single exit exhaust muffler, mounted under the rear valance. The driver's side (left-hand drive) exhaust had the small heat exchanger for the heating system, of course. And as the very early cars had little or no sound insulation around the engine bay, the excessively noisy.

In the suspension department, things were still very simple. At the front, two transverse tubes carried split-leaf torsion bars. Five eaves in the upper tube, four in the lower. These were fixed in the center of the tubes with a pinch bolt and connected to the four rearward pointing trailing arms. And these in turn were fixed to the spindles and spindle arms and link pins and traditional kingpins. Single-acting shock absorbers all round were by Hemscheid. And steering was a simple worm and nut box, connected to the steering wheel via a flexible 'doughnut'.

At the rear, following the Type 60 design, the four-speed transmission conveyed the drive via two swing axles, held in place at the rear hubs by single blade-like control arms which connected them to he transverse torsion bars.

Car production aside, the long running debate over who should actually own the factory and the facilities it offered continued throughout 1945. Technically, the Wolfsburg facility was on offer to the Allies as part of the war reparations, yet on repeated occasions no other country took up the offer. This was partly because a half-demolished factory and a few battle-scarred machines was hardly the most desirable of prizes, but also because the British motor Industry refused to see the value of Porsche's basic design, Because the military had found the little car so very effect during the war, one of the very first post war Beetles was sent to England for appraisal. The bastions of the British car industry did not share the Army's enthusiasm, finding the car too ugly, noisy and generally too odd, Compared with what was on offer in Britain In the immediate post war period, the Beetle was completely incongruous, so their reaction is understandable. Later that year, a delegation from the British Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) visited the factory and wrote a report, 'Investigation of the Developments in the German Automobile during the Post War Period'. This was followed by a further report, published In 1946. Entitled, 'Investigation into the Design and Performance of the Volkswagen or German People's Car', it contained a comparative road test between a Hillman Minx and the Volkswagen that had been sent to England some months No doubt on the say-so of the few engineers at the Humber car company evaluated the Volkswagen, the British eventually turned both car and factory down. And although this was proved very bad judgment, they can take comfort In the fact the they were by no means the only ones.

In February 1947 the Australian Reparations Commission turned down the chance, and in February 1948 Henry Ford II did the same At a well-documented meeting in Cologne in March 1948, Mr Ernest Breach, one of Ford's advisors summed it up with the words, 'I don't think what we're being offered here is worth a damn'. One wonders what his thoughts were 20 years later when Volkswagen became Germany's biggest company and Volkswagen vehicles were being built at a rate of one every eight seconds and exported to 130 countries across the world.

The only country who did express an interest was Russia, who a approached the British authorities in the summer of 1948. Unfortunately for them, East-West relations had already begun to cool and plans were in hand to give it back to the West Germans, so the bid was rejected, along with another idea which would have moved the Soviet border so as to place the plant lust Inside the Russian sector.

Despite the various rejections, it wasn't until 1949 that the plant was finally returned to the Germans. It was only through the in ingenuity and sheer stubbornness of the British officers in charge of the plant t at Wolfsburg survived the immediate postwar upheaval at all. Major Ivan Hirst had secured an order for 10,000 Volkswagens in 1946 and production was growing all the time. But struggle was very much the order of the day - Using the traditional, though frowned upon, method of bartering for the things they needed, whole train loads of coal were diverted to Wolfsburg, and much needed machinery was mysteriously 'acquired' from other parts of the country. The plant was steadily turned from a bomb site into a proper national car factory, although production stopped if it rained.

Production grew to about 1000 cars a month in 1946 for a yearly total of 7767 vehicles. There were a few Type 51s, the odd type 93 trailer and one Kübelwagen but for the most part, the factory mainly turned out the plain old Type 11 sedans. The total for 1947 was up slightly at 987 vehicles, but the problems of supply were still huge and what was produced was still only available to certain people. And 'certain people' didn't include the general public…things got better though and the company slowly began to grow and transition…and the rest as they say, is history.

 

 

The On-going Restoration of My Kübelwagen

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