Major German automobile manufacturer: It was founded in 1937 by the Nazi government to mass-produce a low-priced "people's car" (Volkswagen). After World War II it was rebuilt with Allied help, and within a decade it
Major German automobile manufacturer: It was founded in 1937 by the Nazi government to mass-produce a low-priced "people's car" (Volkswagen). After World War II it was rebuilt with Allied help, and within a decade it was producing half of West Germany's motor vehicles. U.S. sales of the small, rounded car were initially low, but an advertising campaign marketing it as the Beetle massively increased sales in the 1960s, making it the leading auto import in the U.S. Competition from other foreign compact cars brought Volkswagen near bankruptcy by 1974, but it rebounded with newer, sportier models such as the Rabbit. In 1998 it introduced a new version of the Beetle. With its affiliates Volkswagen operates plants worldwide; it also owns several other auto companies, including Audi and Rolls-Royce. (Wikipedia) - Volkswagen "VW" redirects here. For other uses, see VW (disambiguation). This article is about Volkswagen Passenger Cars. For the parent group, see Volkswagen Group. For Volkswagen vans, trucks and buses, see Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.
Volkswagen Passenger Cars
|28 May 1937 |
|Wolfsburg, Germany |
|Martin Winterkorn: Chairman of the Board of Management, Ferdinand Piëch: Chairman of Volkswagen Supervisory Board |
|Automobiles Luxury vehicles |
|5,771,789 units (2012) |
|€103.942 billion (2012) |
|€21.7 billion (2012) |
|Volkswagen Group |
Volkswagen (VW; German pronunciation: ; /ˈvoʊks.wæɡ.ən/) is a German automobile manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Volkswagen is the top-selling and original marque of the Volkswagen Group, the biggest German automaker and the second largest automaker in the world.
Volkswagen has three cars in the top 10 list of best-selling cars of all time compiled by the website 24/7 Wall St: the Volkswagen Golf, the Volkswagen Beetle, and the Volkswagen Passat. With these three cars, Volkswagen has the most cars of any automobile manufacturer in the list that are still being manufactured. Volkswagen ranks first in spending the most money of any automaker on research and development as of 2011.
Volkswagen means "people''s car" in German. Its current slogan is "Das Auto" ("The Car"). Contents
HistoryFor vehicle time line tables, see: Volkswagen (timeline),1937–45: People''s Car project becomes KübelwagenModel of Porsche Type 12 (Zündapp), Museum of Industrial Culture, Nuremberg
- 1 History
- 1.1 1937–45: People''s Car project becomes Kübelwagen
- 1.2 1945-1948: British Army, Major Ivan Hirst, unclear future
- 1.3 1948 onwards: Icon for West German regeneration
- 1.4 1961–73: Product line expansion
- 1.5 1974: From Beetle to Golf
- 1.6 1974–90: Entering the mainstream
- 1.7 1991–99: Moving upmarket
- 1.8 2000–present: Model range expansion
- 2 Awards
- 2.1 World Car of the Year
- 2.2 European Car of the Year
- 2.3 Other awards
- 3 Operations
- 3.1 Worldwide presence
- 3.2 Work–life balance
- 3.3 Relationship with Porsche, and the Volkswagen Law
- 3.4 Museum
- 4 Current model range
- 4.1 GTI models
- 4.2 R models
- 5 Discontinued models
- 6 Clean Diesel
- 7 Neat ethanol vehicles
- 8 Flexible-fuel vehicles
- 9 Electric vehicles
- 10 All-electric vehicles
- 11 Hybrid electric vehicles
- 12 Environmental record
- 13 Motorsport
- 13.1 Dakar races
- 13.2 Volkswagen motorsport: around the world
- 13.3 Motorsport gallery
- 14 Known problems
- 15 See also
- 16 Notes and references
- 17 External links
Volkswagen was originally founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront). In the early 1930s, the German auto industry was still largely composed of luxury models, and the average German could rarely afford anything more than a motorcycle. As a result, only one German out of 50 owned a car. Seeking a potential new market, some car makers began independent "peoples'' car" projects – Mercedes'' 170H, Adler''s AutoBahn, Steyr 55, Hanomag 1,3L, among others.
The trend was not new, as Béla Barényi is credited with having conceived the basic design in the middle 1920s. Josef Ganz developed the Standard Superior (going as far as advertising it as the "German Volkswagen"). In Germany the company Hanomag mass-produced the 2/10 PS "Komissbrot", a small, cheap rear engined car, from 1925 to 1928. Also, in Czechoslovakia, the Hans Ledwinka''s penned Tatra T77, a very popular car amongst the German elite, was becoming smaller and more affordable at each revision. Ferdinand Porsche, a well known designer for high end vehicles and race cars, had been trying for years to get a manufacturer interested in a small car suitable for a family. He felt the small cars at the time were just stripped down big cars. Instead he built a car he called the "Volksauto" from the ground up in 1931, using many of the ideas floating around at the time and several of his own, putting together a car with an air-cool