Oh, and they designed a "everybody can afford" private jet Volksflugzeug. On bragging, the pie masters who sit in the office and meet every day are no better than the KdF organization of the last century.
Kdf launched the "Beetle Savings Scheme", where people need to buy 5 marks of stamps per week (average national income of 32 marks per week) to collect a total of 990 marks of Beetle car purchases.
After the blitzkrieg in Poland, the crowdfunding to buy the Beetle found that it was lame, the money from the crowdfunding plan was used to build military cars, and the Beetle designed by Dr. Porsche was converted into a Type 82 multi-purpose vehicle, which everyone liked to call "barrel car". As for the highway built for taxation, it was not intended to be used by the people, which was the fast track for the German army to quickly mobilize armored troops.
Dr. Porsche was not idle, he was pulled by the moustache to design armored vehicles, famous works include Porsche Tiger tank, Ferdinand self-propelled gun, rat super heavy tank. The common feature of these armored vehicles is electric drive, and in the 30s, it was expensive to design such an advanced electric drive device, which was clearly not intended to be practical.
Therefore, Dr. Porsche, who wasted a lot of money to develop a bunch of garbage equipment, later obtained a good name - "Anti-Deqi" Porsche.
Without my spoilers, everyone knows that Desan eventually lost.
After the Allies took over the "bus city" (Stadt des KdF-Wagens), it was renamed "Wolfsburg", which is the official name we call Wolfsburg today.
The U.S. army later handed over the Volkswagen factory to the British, and Major Ivan Hirst of the British Army took over the place, re-producing cars from September 1945, and the British Army placed an order for 20,000 Volkswagen plants. In March 1948, the British planned to give Volkswagen to Ford for free, but Henry Ford II (the big fat man in "Speed King") thought Volkswagen was unprofitable and gave up.
Enzo Ferrari was right, "Henry Ford II is just a second."
NIS missed not only the opportunity to acquire Ferrari, but also the opportunity to own the largest car company in Europe.
Beginning in 1948, Volkswagen embarked on the path of helping Germany's post-war renaissance, and "building cars for the people" was the original intention of Dr. Porsche to design the Beetle.
During nordhofer's tenure, the German media called him "King Noordhof", and he mainly did three major things:
The first, as I just said, makes Volkswagen a major European car company with annual sales of 1 million vehicles.
The second was the acquisition of Auto Union, which later became a German luxury brand comparable to BMW Under the leadership of Dr. Porsche's grandson, Ferdinand Pierch.
The third piece makes Type 1 (Beetle) and Type 2 (T1) the symbol of German cars, creating a strong, durable, economical and reliable image of German cars.
Below is a photo of the 100,000th Volkswagen T1 rolling off the production line in Wolfsburg in 1955, and the big brother in the suit who is speaking in front of the forklift of the production line is "King Nordhof".
I've told the story of the birth of the T1 before: In 1947, Ben Pon, the owner of a Dutch dealership, saw the Plattenwagen flatcar built on the Chassis chassis of the Beetle in the Volkswagen factory, and suddenly had the inspiration for the design of a van and drew it.
Eventually Volkswagen took Ben's suggestion and developed it. Because the Beetle was the first car of the Volkswagen brand, called the Type 1, this van was named type 2, becoming the second mass production car of the Volkswagen brand, following the Beetle's rear-drive chassis.
Given that the Porsche 356 also uses a Beetle chassis, the Volkswagen T1 van and the Porsche 356 are objectively and de facto homologous...
On modular car building, all the brothers present here are brothers, and only Volkswagen is the grandfather.
The T1 (Type 2) is very rough, and Nordhofer explains its original design intention: we hope that everyone will use the Type 2 without wearing Sven's gloves, it is a tool car, and it will not rot.
The Type 2 started with only a 24PS horizontally opposed four-cylinder gasoline engine, and although it ran slowly, it could carry up to 750kg of cargo, or 8 passengers — and it didn't matter if it were a little more.
The Type 2 was very popular in Germany, but its production capacity was very low, only 10 cars a day, and the production capacity climbed until the end of 1950, when it finally reached the level of 8,000 vehicles per year.
After the war, Germany was in ruins, and the Type 2 was obviously a more practical machine than the Type 1 Beetle, it was cheap and versatile, and it was not enough to sell.
Given that the Type 2 is in short supply, Volkswagen has built a legendary Volkswagen Commercial Vehicle plant in a city west of Wolfsburg.
Here is the capital of Lower Saxony, the industrial capital of Hannover. This site selection stood out from 235 alternatives.
After the Hanover plant was officially opened in 1956, the Transporter legend entered a new chapter.
In order to build a factory on this vacant land, the Germans built a temporary small city with temporary board houses, canteens under tents, temporary offices, and so on.
A total of 28 cranes and 22 large mixers were put into operation, adding 5,000 cubic meters of concrete per day. At the same time, new railway tracks were built to connect the Hanover plant with the existing rail network at the time.
Employees ready to move to Hanover are trained in production at the Wolfsburg plant, where a total of 4,000 employees are involved in production when the Hanover plant enters operations, and this number will increase to 14,800 by 2020.
Watching type 2 roll off the production line from the Hanover factory is also a treat, like a roller coaster.
The industrial manufacturing of the Germans can play art.
The full name of the T series is Transferer, from T1 to T6, the main production force is this Hanover plant.
Today, the Hannover plant covers an area of 1.1 million square meters, equivalent to 152 football fields.
If the Beetle Type 1 is the embodiment of evil, the case of the Ponzi scheme (336,000 people were deceived by crowdfunding schemes); then T1 Type 2 is the embodiment of courage, which represents the wisdom and courage of the German people to be reborn after the war.
Below is a cross-sectional view of Type 2, which shows how simple its mechanical structure is. I once drove the Type 2 produced in france in the 60s, and there was no control at all, no power device, it was a very simple but practical large-space utility vehicle.
The public officially says of Type 2 – it was originally a member of the working class, but the reality now is that which class has it, it is the icing on the cake.
Huge Volkswagen logos and smiling faces, a stylish two-color body, extremely low car costs, and a wealth of retrofit cases have made the Type 2 popular in Europe and the Americas for decades.
It can be transformed into pickup trucks for cargo transport.
Its passenger version even tickles indians when they look at it.
It's an ambulance, it's a ladder car, it's a postal cart, it's a kitchen for mobile vendors.
It has fascinated the advertising world and is a favorite of the scribblers.
It can be transformed into a luxury Limo.
It has a place in the movie.
It has become a cultural symbol of various kinds, such as becoming a bucket of three nephews, driven by popular fans.
For example, become an electric stroller.
Like being a bar.
Like becoming a tent.
When the public promotes the Transferer series of advertisements, it is always necessary to pull on the Type 2 to do cultural precipitation.
Volkswagen has also revived Type 2 4 times.
The 2001 Volkswagen Microbus concept was originally scheduled to land in the U.S. market in 2007, but there may not have been enough hippies, and the project was cancelled in May 2004.
The Bulli concept car released at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show directly followed the Bulli nickname. The concept car is purely electric, with a 40kWh battery pack offering a range of 299km. Mass production? Think too much.
The BUDD-e concept car released in 2016, built using the MEB platform, is equipped with a 101kWh large battery pack, has a range of 375km, and is scheduled for mass production in 2020, of course, now in 2021, so this time it is also a ticket jump.
Announced at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show the ID. Buzz concept car, the big head of the ID. electric car series, buzz is the harmonic sound of the Bus.
In 2022, ID.Buzz mass production in chattanooga, an industrial city in southeastern Tennessee, USA.
By the way, at the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show, Volkswagen also showed off the ID. Buzz Cargo Concept, a cargo version of buzz, is a must-have version for every model T.
In summary, Volkswagen has prepared to revive the T1 a total of 4 times, a total of 5 concept cars have been released, and now the feelings have finally landed, ID.Buzz debuted today (March 10, 2022) in Hamburg, Germany, and the Hanover plant continues to serve as a mass production task, pre-sale in Europe in May, and launched in autumn.
The resurrection of Type 2 by the Germans is a historical necessity. Because Type 2 participated in the wave of Post-War Reconstruction in Germany with its clever design, minimalist workmanship, and unlimited functions, its status in the hearts of the German people is noble.
This is why the masses officially refer to it as "a member of the working class.".
When the Volkswagen T1 celebrated its 70th birthday, the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicle Division made it a birthday cake with 7 sparks stuffed as candles.
Today, The Carrier's home base is still the Hanover factory.
Volkswagen implements the Change4Factory production strategy, which aims to reduce emissions from the production process at the Hanover plant to 50% in 2010 levels by 2025 in line with the Volkswagen Group's 2050 carbon neutrality target.
The level of automation has been improved in this retrofit, when the T6 was manufactured, the level of automation in the factory was 77%, and now the automation level of the T7 production line is 93%.
The two production lines at the Hanover plant will produce the T6 petrol/diesel version and the T7 gasoline/diesel/hybrid version in the future, as well as the ID.Buzz pure electric passenger version/pure electric version.
Many people think of the Transferer family as niche playthings. Wrong, it is rare in China, in European and American society, transporter is the same labor tool as Transit Quanshun.
Let's look at a set of figures: as of the beginning of 2020, the Volkswagen Transformer family (T series) has produced more than 13 million units (of which 9.5 million are from the Hanover plant), making it the best-selling multi-purpose model in the world.
In order to build momentum for the newly born ID.Buzz, Volkswagen's commercial vehicle division plans to hold the Bulli Carnival at the Hannover Messe from July 15 to 17, 2022, which is also an important moment for ID.Buzz to join the Bulli Carnival for the first time.
The Volkswagen depot that was thrown away by the Allies, the Germans only relied on the Type 1 Beetle and Type 2 T1 to lay a foundation, and now they have become the boss of the European automobile industry.
(Text: Huang Hengle, Pacific Auto Network)