Hans Klapp’s VW Year Book 1948
As talented (and slightly unhinged) an engineer and scientist as I may be, I’ve not quite managed to invent time travel, yet. But, when I do perfect my Samba-shaped TARDIS, one year I’d love to visit is 1948. Because, on the first day of January that year, there was a new face around Wolfsburg. It belonged to Heinz Heinrich Nordhoff, the freshly-appointed managing director of Volkswagen. And the company he’d just assumed charge of was about to be shaken to its core and taken to undreamed-of levels of success and prosperity that would continue for the next 20 years of Nordhoff’s tenure. Oh, and just to make 1948 stand out even more, he also authorised the development of the Type 2.
Even though Wolfsburg, and therefore Volkwagen, was still technically under the control of the British Army (which had been running it since 1945), Nordhoff’s lofty ideals were clear from the start. “For the first time in its
