Volkswagen (shortened to VW) is a German motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front, known for their iconic Beetle, it is the flagship brand of the Volkswagen Group, the largest car maker by worldwide sales in 2016 and 2017. The group’s biggest market is in China, which delivers 40% of its sales and profits. The German term Volk translates to “people”, thus Volkswagen translates to “people’s car”.
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Béla Barényi, a pioneering automotive engineer, is credited as already having conceived the basic design during the mid-1920s. Josef Ganz developed the Standard Superior (going as far as advertising it as the “German Volkswagen”). In Germany, the company Hanomag mass-produced the 2/10 PS “Kommissbrot”, a small, cheap rear-engined car, from 1925 to 1928. Also, in Czechoslovakia, the Hans Ledwinka’s penned Tatra T77, a very popular car amongst the German elite, was becoming smaller and more affordable at each revision. Ferdinand Porsche, a well-known designer for high-end vehicles and race cars, had been trying for years to get a manufacturer interested in a small car suitable for a family. He built a car named the “Volksauto” from the ground up in 1933, using many popular ideas and several of his own, putting together a car with an air-cooled rear engine, torsion bar suspension, and a “beetle” shape, the front bonnet rounded for better aerodynamics (necessary as it had a small engine).
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VW
In 1934, with many of the above projects still in development or early stages of production, Adolf Hitler became involved, ordering the production of a basic vehicle capable of transporting two adults and three children at 100 km/h (62 mph). He wanted a car every German family would be able to afford. The “People’s Car” would be available through a savings plan at RM990 (US$396 in 1938), about the price of a small motorcycle (the average income being around RM32 a week).
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War changed production to military vehicles—the Type 82 Kübelwagen (“Bucket car”) utility vehicle (VW’s most common wartime model), and the amphibious Schwimmwagen, manufactured for German forces. As was common with much of the production in Nazi Germany during the war, slave labour was utilised in the Volkswagen plant, e.g. from Arbeitsdorf concentration camp.
In April 1945, KdF-Stadt and its heavily bombed factory were captured by the United States armed forces and subsequently handed over to the British, within whose occupation zone the town and factory fell. The factory was placed under the control of British Army officer Major Ivan Hirst, REME, a civilian Military Governor with the occupying forces. At first, one plan was to use it for military vehicle maintenance, and possibly dismantle and ship it to Britain. Since it had been used for military production, (though not of KdF-Wagens) and had been in Hirst’s words, a “political animal” rather than a commercial enterprise, technically making it liable for destruction under the terms of the Potsdam Agreement, the equipment could have been salvaged as war reparations. Allied dismantling policy changed in late 1946 to mid-1947, though heavy industry continued to be dismantled until 1951.
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Volkswagen is the founding and namesake member of the Volkswagen Group, a large international corporation in charge of multiple car and truck brands, including Audi, SEAT, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Scania, MAN, and Škoda. Volkswagen Group, as a unit, is Europe’s largest motor vehicle manufacturer, with over 74000 employees and over 7700 dealerships. For a long time, Volkswagen has had a market share over 20 percent.
In 2010, Volkswagen posted record sales of 6.29 million vehicles, with its global market share at 11.4%. In 2008, Volkswagen became the third-largest car maker in the world, and, as of 2016, Volkswagen was the second largest manufacturer worldwide. In 2018 the company benefited from trade tariffs and new emission standards, with a record deliveries of 10.8 million vehicles. Volkswagen Group’s core markets include Germany and China. In July 2019, Volkswagen invested $2.6 billion in Argo AI, a startup focused on developing self-driving vehicles.
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