Name: Why Did Volkswagen Kill The Beetle?
Uploaded: 2020-06-01T07:35:10.000Z
Duration: 11 min 22 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In July of 2019, production on what is perhaps one of the

most iconic and important cars of all time came to an

Volkswagen is one of the world's largest automakers.

It houses brands such as Audi, Porsche and Bentley.

But perhaps its best known vehicle is this little thing:

There are few vehicles in the history of the world

that have been as important as a Volkswagen Beetle.

This car arose from the ashes of Nazi Germany, became a symbol of

the 60s counterculture, and has been immortalized over and over in

It is perhaps been in production longer than any other car in history

That makes it the most successful car design ever.

Even more than the famed Ford Model T, which it eclipsed in total sales

22.5 million of all three versions of the Beatles have been made

The Beatles nameplate trails only the Volkswagen Golf and the Toyota

To understand the beetle, it helps to know it's strange and sometimes

Specifically, the car that became a hippie icon and Hollywood star

actually traces its roots back to Hitler's Third Reich.

The name Volkswagen in German means people's car and the

Volkswagen Beetle was originally intended to be exactly that,

a car for the people in the early days of the automotive industry.

Cars were a luxury only the wealthiest could afford.

Of course, this began to change when makers such as Henry Ford pioneered

production methods that made cars accessible to the every man.

At that time, the term Volkswagen was not yet a brand name, but a term

used in automotive circles to describe a relatively new concept of the

people's car, a vehicle that would be attainable for the masses.

The idea of mass motoring also appealed to Adolf Hitler, who had risen

to power in Germany in 1933 and was reputed to be quite a

Yes, that Porsche submitted a proposal to the new German government to

In 1934, Ferdinand Porsche was directed to

travel to New Orleans and also to be used as military vehicles.

Though several other automakers had also presented designs for a people's

car, Hitler took up Porsches idea in large part because of Porsche's

It was this design that would later become the Volkswagen Beetle.

In 1938, the National Socialist Trade Union called the German

Labor Front, started the Volkswagen Work Company and began building a

The group planned to make 150000 people's cars within the first year of

the factory's plant, opening in 1939, 300000 in the

In 1938, Porsche's car was revealed and Hitler named it the

KdF-Wagon. The letters K,D,F stood for the German

As war broke out, the factory intended to build the cars was retooled for

weapons and eventually military vehicles.

All customer orders for the planned car were cancelled.

Even for those who had paid out of their salaries for them, the use of the

factory for weapons ended on April 11th, 1945, when American

The Americans turned over the management of the region to the British who

recognized the utility of the factory and providing a livelihood for local

They switched the factory over to make civilian vehicles.

There were shortages of raw materials and other obstacles.

But this began the modern era of the car, officially called the

Volkswagen type one and known to much of the world as the

The British occupying forces in charge of the factory made several

decisions that were crucial to Volkswagen's future.

They set up a sales force, a department for servicing the vehicles and a

The British even trained mechanics themselves, using members of the

British Army's own Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

They also made the choice to start exporting cars, beginning the

transformation of the Volkswagen Beetle and the company itself into the

international icons they are known to be today.

Volkswagen was selling across Europe into the United States and even in

Volkswagen and its Beetle both became symbols of what people called

The name given to the country's rapid reconstruction and revival in the

Well, you know, the beetle had two kind of lives.

I mean, its early life in Europe was during the rebuilding after the war.

So a lot of people in Europe viewed it as cheap, affordable

And it didn't become a cultural icon like it is in the U.S.

now, in the U.S., when when kids were buying them in the 60s, it was sort

These were cheap, affordable, exotic, really, because you're from

And I think that that's what helped establish them as as a big cultural

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Why Did Volkswagen Kill The Beetle?

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