"It runs and runs and runs... The Beetle has been rolling on all roads of the world for over 70 years. Its history begins in 1931, when Ferdinand Porsche's design office had already developed a streamlined sedan. After neither Zündapp nor NSU could decide on production, Porsche was commissioned to develop a "Volkswagen". Mercedes was commissioned to build an initial test series of 30 units. It was not until many years later that it became known that Porsche was not the only spiritual father of the Beetle, because as early as 1925 Béla Barényi was already working on a hunchbacked car with an air-cooled boxer engine installed in the rear. Hans Ledwinka also designed a very similar prototype for the Czech Tatra works – both authorships were only recognized many years later and compensated for by VW with high compensation.
In view of the positive evaluation of the Beetle, the government at the time decided to build a Volkswagen plant and so the origin of the city of Wolfsburg actually goes back to the car manufacturer VW, founded in 1938. Initially, there were only a few smaller villages in the more agricultural area in eastern Lower Saxony. With the founding of the plant, the city – city of the KdF car (Kraft durch Freude) near Fallersleben – soon grew to 100,000 inhabitants, and anyone who hears Wolfsburg today automatically thinks of Volkswagen. However, the few cars that were built until the end of the war only went to a privileged few and not to the general population. During the war, only military vehicles were built. After the war, 85 percent of the plant, which was only a few kilometers away from the Soviet occupation zone, was destroyed. The British occupation did not know what to do with the Volkswagen project. Therefore, in the autumn of 1945, three engineers from Ford England visited the plant in Wolfsburg and drove a VW on a road littered with potholes. Despite the praise of military compatriots, who praised the Volkswagen as a wonderful vehicle, they still came to a negative verdict. The tests of the automotive industry on two vehicles that were brought to England at the end of 1946 were also negative. In the end, the plant was finally offered to Henry Ford II at a symbolic price of only one dollar. But even there, the CEO rejected the project, as it received a negative rating from the British Rootes Group with the words "the project would not be worth a penny"!
So a limited liability company was founded, which belonged to a trust company, which in turn was initially under the control of the occupying power. Later, this trust company was transferred to the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany (West) and passed on supervision to the new federal state of Lower Saxony. In the end, Ivan Hirst, officer of the British Control Commission and acting head of Volkswagenwerke GmbH, looked for a technical manager for the plant, which he found in Heinz Nordhoff. Although initially an Allied commission of experts (after the failed handover to Ford) had not certified an economic future for the Beetle, the assembly line began to run again as early as 1945 after handover to the Heinz Nordhoff company - at first relatively slowly. However, this situation was soon to change.
Nordhoff made a success of the Volkswagen, and in the following yearsproduction figures rose incessantly steeply. At the end of 1946, more than 10,000 cars left the factory.
In order to meet the tastes of foreign customers, a more elaborate "export model" was presented in July 1949 in addition to the standard model. The external appearance stood out from the standard models with a high-gloss paint finish and rich chrome plating. From March 1953, an oval window without a vertical bar replaced the "pretzel window". On August 5, 1955, the one millionth Beetle rolled off the production line and symbolized the economic upswing in the country. The "Made in Germany", originally intended as a stigma, became a seal of quality, and the "Beetle" became a huge success, especially in the United States.
Production peaked on 17 February 1972. With 15,007,034 vehicles produced, the Beetle was the new "world champion" and thus became the most successful car, ahead of the previous record holder, the Ford T. In January 1978, the last Volkswagen Beetle produced in Germany rolled off the assembly line in Emden/Osnabrück. After that, Beetle production was moved exclusively abroad. In 1985, the import of the Mexico Beetle to Germany ended.
The remake of the 1:87 scale model of this cult vehicle was overdue. So the prototype (from the economic miracle period) was remeasured using an elaborate laser process in order to be able to reproduce the rather difficult body shape exactly en miniature. Also noteworthy are the bright, noble headlights, which were manufactured according to the latest standards and have the finest chrome-plated headlight rings. This means that we have a model at the start that was created according to the latest guidelines and thus corresponds to the perfection of today's miniatures."
