Hans Klapp’s VW Year Book 1934-1939

Although the Volkswagen Beetle - and thus the company that went on to give us all the fantastic air-cooled vehicles derived from it - can trace its origins back to the 1920s, we’ve chosen 1934 as the formal birth of the Beetle. That’s the year that Ferdinand Porsche published his formal ideas for a ‘German Volkswagen’, thus connecting the German word for ‘people’s car’ with the vehicle that he and his team would come to design. Ferdinand was a talented and innovative engineer with a reputation for thinking outside of the box - for example, he’d come up with a hybrid petrol/electric car in 1901 - and founded a design consultancy in 1931.

Thanks to commissions, Porsche had already dabbled with the idea of a low budget, mass market car, most notably his Zundapp Type 12 in 1931 and NSU Type 32 of 1933. But neither of these projects had amounted to much, which had probably left him quite frustrated; he could see the potential but lacked the backing to make it happen. What Porsche foresaw was a 28bhp full four-seater lightweight car capable of 100kph (62mph) and priced at