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Cadillac Cien
01-21-2005, 07:59 AM
The KdF Wagen,anyone knows about it?It is the FIRST ever beetle-type car to be produced...In Adolf Hitler's time...

Correct me if I am wrong...

BTW,KdF=Kraft durch Freude(In German)
Meaning=Strength through Joy
Name given by the Nazis

EvilPaladin
01-21-2005, 08:29 AM
The origins of the car date back to 1930s Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler's desire that almost anybody should be able to afford a car fit with a proposal by car designer Ferdinand Porsche, although Hitler himself played some role in the car's shape and, possibly, nickname. Dissatisfied with the initial design of the car's front end (and perhaps caught up in the 1930s' mania for all things streamlined) Hitler penned a more rounded shape on a napkin and handed it to Porsche with the instructions, "it should look like a beetle, you only have to look to nature to find out what true streamlining is." The intention was that ordinary working Germans would buy the car by means of a savings scheme. Prototypes of the car called the KdF-Wagen (German: Kraft durch Freude = strength through joy), appeared from 1935 onwards—the very first prototypes were produced by Daimler-Benz in Stuttgart. The car already had its distinctive round shape (designed by Erwin Komenda) and air-cooled, flat-four, rear-mounted engine. However, the factory (in the new town of Kdf-Stadt, purpose-built for the factory workers) had only produced a handful of cars by the time war started in 1939. Consequently the first volume-produced versions of the car's chassis (if not body) were military vehicles, the jeep-like Kübelwagen (approx. 52,000 built) and the amphibious Schwimmwagen (approx. 14,000 built).

Deliberately designed to be as simple as possible mechanically, there was simply less that could go wrong; the radiator-less air-cooled 985 cm³ 25 hp (19 kW) motors proved especially effective in action in North Africa's desert heat. A handful of civilian-spec Beetles were produced, primarily for the Nazi elite, in the years 1940-1945, but production figures were too small to be of any significance. In response to constant gasoline shotages, a few wartime "Holzbrenner" Beetles were even steam-powered with wood burning boilers under the hood. In addition to the Kubelwagen, Schwimmwagen, and a handful of others, the factory managed another wartime vehicle: the Kommandeurwagen; a Beetle body mounted on the 4WD Kubelwagen chassis. A total of 669 Kommandeurwagens were produced until 1945, when all production was halted due to heavy damage sustained in Allied air raids on the factory. Much of the essential equipment had already been moved to underground bunkers for protection, allowing production to resume quickly once hostilities had ended.

Much of the Beetle's design was inspired by the advanced Tatra cars of Hans Ledwinka. Tatra sued, but the lawsuit was stopped when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. The matter was re-opened after WW2 and in 1961 Volkswagen paid Tatra 3,000,000 Deutsche Marks.

The Volkswagen company owes its postwar existence largely to one man, British army officer Major Ivan Hirst (1916–2000). Post-war, he was ordered to take control of the heavily bombed factory, which the Americans had captured. He persuaded the British military to order 20,000 of the cars, and by 1946 the factory was producing 1,000 cars a month. The car and its town changed their Nazi-era names, to Volkswagen (people's car) and Wolfsburg. The first 1,785 Beetles were made in a factory near Wolfsburg in 1945.

Et voilà. :)

Cadillac Cien
01-21-2005, 08:35 AM
u got that from a book,didnt u?
coz i also came to know it from a beetle book

EvilPaladin
01-21-2005, 08:45 AM
u got that from a book,didnt u?
coz i also came to know it from a beetle book
I have the same information in a book but I just copied/pasted it from Wikipedia as it was already typed. :D

McReis
01-21-2005, 08:48 AM
Et voilà. :)


Very well! I trluy appreciate when someone comes up with history fundamented answers. :cool:
So this got to mean that anyone who loves beetles has to pay respect to Hitler? :D
The guy was terrible, but even to get that terrible he had to have some geniallity, otherwise he wouldn't have been supported by so many people. He was a brain washer and a skillful brain user. A shame he was a racist an assassin.

Cadillac Cien
01-21-2005, 08:56 AM
yes!!!hes quite handsome but he is bad