Background
Designed in the 1930s, the VW Beetle is one very few cars that can genuinely claim to have changed the world.
Designed by Ferdinand Porsche in response to Hitler’s demand for a ‘people’s car’, or ‘Volkswagen’, the Beetle combined striking utilitarian looks with low cost, simple maintenance and, of course, the air-cooled engine – variations of which would go on so serve with such distinction in some rather more sporting vehicles carrying the Porsche name.
With production barely under way, it was halted in 1939 by the commencement of a global conflict started by the very man who had insisted upon its production.
By the end of the war, the factory at Fallersleben (a suburb of Wolfsburg) lay in ruins and was handed over by the Americans to the British, who were tasked with dismantling anything that might conceivably be re-used for any future German re-armament plans.
British Army officer Major Ivan Hirst took control of the site and, with quite extraordinary foresight, saw an opportunity to both provide the British military with some much-needed vehicles and German workers with some equally vital jobs.
Somehow, Hirst persuaded the British military to order 20,000 cars, a remarkable feat given that an earlier report by the British into its viability stated that, "The vehicle does not meet the fundamental technical requirements of a motor-car… it is quite unattractive to the average buyer.”
Oh, the irony.
1 million Beetles had been built by 1955 and, ultimately, over 21 million Beetles were produced in total.
In 1947 production switched from supplying the British military to meeting perceived civilian demand.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The fine 1954 example we have here in Spain represents a key developmental stage on an important and influential historical narrative that has helped shape not just the automotive industry but society itself.
