Béla Barényi The man behind the Beetle?

While Ferdinand Porsche is universally recognised as ‘the father of the Beetle’, it’s now widely acknowledged that he was, ahem, ‘influenced’ by previous designs and their designers. In past Blasts, we’ve looked at Josef Ganz and his ‘May Bug’ and Standard Superior creations, as well as Hans Ledwinka and the Tatra V570.

This trio of vehicles all bear strong similarities to the later Volkswagen. So much so, in 1938, Tatra began legal action against VW and Ferdinand Porsche for patent infringement. Adolf Hitler resolved this tricky judicial issue by invading Czechoslovakia and taking over the company. A decisive, if unorthodox, way to resolve a court case.

However, pre-dating both Ganz’s and Ledwinka’s vehicles was the work of Austro-Hungarian engineer, Béla Barényi. He came up with something distinctly Beetle-ish during 1925, several years before Porsche’s Volkswagen project began. In the 1950s, he successfully challenged some of Porsche’s patents,