45 Fun Facts About Volkswagen

In which German city is Volkswagen headquartered?

Wolfsburg's car plant was slated to be dismantled and shipped out as war reparations before British officers got it building cars.

What does the name Volkswagen mean in German?

People's car, though the idea wasn't the Nazis': Hanomag was already selling a small, cheap car, the Kommissbrot, in 1925.

Which organisation established Volkswagen in 1937?

The German Labour Front, the Nazi Party's labour organisation, also sold the weekly savings stamps that buyers collected toward the car.

Which engineer received the 1934 contract to design the car that became the Volkswagen Beetle?

Ferdinand Porsche got the Beetle contract, but in wartime his heavy-tank design lost out to Henschel's, which became the Tiger I.

Which leader demanded a car that could carry two adults and three children for about 1,000 Reichsmarks?

Adolf Hitler wanted a car every German family could afford, at a time when car ownership in Germany lagged far behind other countries.

Roughly how many Germans paid into the pre-war savings scheme to buy a Volkswagen?

336,000 savers paid in, but a 1961 settlement gave them only a discount on a new Volkswagen or a small cash payout.

The pre-war Volkswagen was known by what name, from the Nazi leisure programme?

KdF-Wagen, yet no ordinary buyer received one: the war turned the new factory over to military work first.

In which country did the last original Volkswagen Beetle roll off the production line in 2003?

Mexico: the clincher was Mexico City's move to phase two-door Beetles out of its taxi fleet, since four-door cabs were judged safer against crime.

What was Volkswagen's most common wartime model?

The Type 82 Kübelwagen came from a plant that relied heavily on forced labour; in 1998, as survivors sued, Volkswagen announced a compensation fund.

Which British Army officer took control of the bombed factory in 1945 and restarted production?

Ivan Hirst had a Beetle painted army green and showed it to the British Army, whose big order put the bombed plant back to work.

Which country received Volkswagen's first export cars, in 1947?

Netherlands: importer Ben Pon took the first cars and also sketched the boxy van that became Volkswagen's bus.

Which former Opel manager did the British appoint to run Volkswagen after the war?

Heinrich Nordhoff had run production at Opel, yet he was working at a Hamburg garage when the British recruited him.

Which Czech carmaker did Volkswagen pay a million marks in 1965 over claims the Beetle copied its designs?

Tatra had sued before the war, but the case was dropped after Germany occupied the Sudetenland and revived only once the war was over.

Which New York advertising agency created Volkswagen's famous 1960s campaigns?

Doyle Dane Bernbach's Volkswagen account took it abroad: in 1961 it opened its first overseas office, in West Germany.

What was the Beetle's official factory designation?

Type 1, and its air-cooled engine was reportedly chosen so no coolant could freeze in a car kept without a garage.

Which Volkswagen chief executive resigned days after the 2015 diesel emissions scandal broke?

Martin Winterkorn said he accepted responsibility as chief executive, even though he was not aware of any wrongdoing on his part.

Which company did Volkswagen acquire in 1964, giving it the dormant Audi brand?

Auto Union was later merged with NSU into the modern Audi, whose front-wheel-drive know-how helped Volkswagen build the Beetle's successors.

The 1971 Super Beetle differed from the standard car mainly by adopting which front suspension?

MacPherson struts and a longer, reshaped nose gave the Super Beetle a bigger front boot, with room for the spare tyre to lie flat.

The military-styled Volkswagen Type 181 was sold under which name in the United States?

The Thing sold in the US for only two model years, because the 1975 version could not meet tougher passenger-car safety standards.

The 1973 Volkswagen Passat was a fastback version of which car?

Audi 80: Volkswagen needed the Passat to replace its Type 3 and Type 4, which had sold far fewer cars than the Beetle.

Which Italian designer styled both the Scirocco and the first Golf?

Giorgetto Giugiaro's Golf replaced the Beetle only after Volkswagen had shelved a long line of its own replacement prototypes.

Under what name was the first-generation Golf sold in the United States and Canada?

Rabbit: Volkswagen of America even developed a Rabbit pickup, which Europe later got as the Volkswagen Caddy.

The 1975 Polo began life as a rebadged version of which car?

Audi 50: Audi dropped its original in 1978, while Volkswagen's rebadged Polo went on for generations.

Near which Pennsylvania town did Volkswagen build cars from 1978 to 1988?

Volkswagen's plant near New Stanton closed in 1988 after years of labour unrest and falling sales.

Under what name did South Africa keep building the first-generation Volkswagen Golf for decades?

Citi Golf: the bigger, pricier Golf Mk2 would have left a gap for a small, affordable car, so Volkswagen South Africa kept the Mk1 going.

Which Spanish carmaker did Volkswagen take a majority stake in during 1986 and buy outright in 1990?

SEAT built mostly licensed Fiat designs until that partnership ended in 1982, when Volkswagen stepped in with its first deal.

Which designer's 1994 Concept One led to the New Beetle?

J Mays drew it with Freeman Thomas, and the warm response at the 1994 Detroit auto show led Volkswagen to build the car.

The 1995 Sharan MPV came from a joint venture with which company?

The same project produced the Ford Galaxy and SEAT Alhambra.

Which Volkswagen city car had a 1999 '3L' version that could cover 100 km on 3 litres of diesel?

Lupo sales were slow, so Volkswagen dropped the car in 2005 and sold the Brazilian-designed Fox in its place.

Which Italian supercar maker has belonged to the Volkswagen Group since 1998?

Lamborghini's founder, Ferruccio Lamborghini, built tractors from 1948 before he started making sports cars in 1963.

The Routan minivan of 2008 was a rebadged version of which vehicle?

Dodge Grand Caravan: Volkswagen's rebadged Routan sold far below the company's hopes before it was dropped.

In which US city did Volkswagen complete a new assembly plant in May 2011?

Chattanooga's plant opened 23 years after Volkswagen closed its Pennsylvania factory, bringing VW back to building cars in the US.

Which US body issued the 2015 notice of violation over Volkswagen's diesel cars?

The Environmental Protection Agency's case ended with Volkswagen agreeing in 2017 to plead guilty to three criminal felony counts.

What does US law call software, like Volkswagen's, that switches off emissions controls outside lab tests?

A defeat device: in normal driving, Volkswagen's affected diesels emitted nitrogen oxides at up to 40 times the standard.

Volkswagen's all-electric I.D. R set an all-time course record in 2018 at which event?

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: Volkswagen built the I.D. R to show off the electric drive of its coming I.D. family of cars.

In March 2021 Volkswagen briefly claimed it was renaming its American division to what?

Voltswagen was an April Fools' stunt, and the Associated Press, which had reported it as real, then headlined 'Volkswagen caught lying again'.

Which off-road brand did Volkswagen confirm it was relaunching as an EV maker in May 2022?

It is the first time VW has created a new brand based solely in the US market.

In October 2008, a share squeeze briefly made Volkswagen worth more than which company, then the world's most valuable?

ExxonMobil was overtaken as hedge funds that had bet on VW's shares falling scrambled to buy them back.

The 1999 Car of the Century poll ranked the Beetle fourth. Which car came first?

The Mini and the DS took second and third.

Which driver won four consecutive World Rally Championships (2013-2016) in the Polo R WRC?

Sébastien Ogier won every drivers' title the Polo R WRC contested, before Volkswagen quit the championship at the end of 2016.

Which single-seater racing series was built from cheap Beetle parts?

Formula Vee: future Formula One champions Niki Lauda, Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Keke Rosberg all raced in it early on.

Which Beetle-based Volkswagen sports coupé went on sale in 1955?

Karmann Ghia: coachbuilder Wilhelm Karmann wanted a sporty Beetle-based car, and Italy's Ghia studio styled the prototype.

What name did the US market use for the Volkswagen Type 3 Variant estate?

Squareback was the US name for an estate from the larger Type 3 range, which Volkswagen introduced to supplement the Beetle.

Which VW model of 2003 was Brazil's first full flexible-fuel car, running on any petrol-ethanol blend?

Gol: within three years of its launch, flex-fuel engines were in nearly three-quarters of the new cars sold in Brazil.

Which German state helped run the trust that took over Volkswagen from the British in 1949?

Lower Saxony: before the handover, British carmakers had been offered the factory's equipment and turned it down.