Although the Volkswagen Beetle, and 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 Ferdinand Porsche published his formal ideas for a ‘German volkswagen’, in doing so forever connecting the German word for ‘people’s car’ with the vehicle he and his team would come to design.
Ferdinand was a talented and innovative engineer with a reputation for thinking outside of the box, long before that was ever a term. For example, he’d come up with a hybrid petrol / electric car (sound familiar?) in 1901, and founded an eponymous design consultancy in 1931.
Proof of concept
Thanks to commissions, Porsche had already dabbled with the idea of a low budget, mass market car, most notably his Zündapp Type 12 in 1931, and NSU Type 32 of 1933. But neither of these projects had amounted to much, which had left him quite frustrated; he could see the potential, but lacked the backing to make it happen.
What Porsche foresaw was a lightweight, 28bhp, four-seater car capable of 100kph (62mph) and priced at 1,550 reichsmarks.
Cheap by comparison to any of the other German vehicles then available.
Porsche’s ideas attracted the attention of Germany’s newly appointed Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Sorry, but he was bound to pop up eventually. Porsche was summoned to Berlin in April 1934 and met, notably a ridiculously cheap price of 1,000RM.
