How Hitler paved the way for an iconic sports car

 The people's car

Most of you probably know this story by now. Some angry bloke called Adolf wanted a car that every citizen of his country could afford. Being Hitler, he paid no attention to what was possible or sensible at the time, and came up with a set of specifications that the car had to meet. Much like Ferdinand Piëch imposed when coming up with the Phaeton, but more on that later.

The car Ferdinand Porsche was working on for Zündapp. Familiar?
Picture courtesy of newbeetle.org

At that time, a brilliant young engineer and designer with a familiar name (Ferdinand Porsche) was working on a rear engine rear wheel drive for the masses, powered by his trademark flat four. Hitler liked the idea, and said he wanted a car which could carry two adults and three children at speeds of upto 60mph, and cost the same as a motorcycle of the time. And that was in the late '30s. Lets put that into perspective. The land speed record at the time was around 270mph. Imagine if you were to build a car which could do 170mph while carrying five people, and retailed for £3000. You get the idea.

Being Porsche, he didn't laugh at Hitler and ask him to sober up. Maybe cause it was Hitler, and that wasn't such a good idea. So Porsche got to work with a few other engineers and decided to copy some designs from a Czechoslovakian company, Tatra. Hitler and Porsche were both fans of the Tatra line of rear engined, rear wheel drive cars, and Porsche admitted to having been influenced by Tatra's designs. Tatra even got compensation from Volkswagen, post war, for the same. The rest as they say, was history.

Volkswagen survived only on the Beetle, or the Type-1 as it was officially known. They didn't have another platform, and they didn't intend to build one for almost half a century. Through the '50s and the '60s, the Beetle soldiered on, outselling more contemporary models in Europe and America, with its light and powerful Boxer engine, and its incredible reliability and simplicity. Volkswagen also launched the Type-2 Transporter, essentially a Beetle platform with an extremely pretty box on top.

The people's sports car

The story of Volkswagen and the Beetle continues, right to the present day, where we find a hideous, re-bodied Golf. But we are going to take a different route in history, which coincides nicely with a new car announced today. In the late '40s, Ferdinand Porsche's son, also Ferdinand Porsche, took the entire beetle platform, including the engine and the suspension, and gave it to the Porsche designers to turn into a sports car. And that is the reason that 70 years on, Jeremy Clarkson calls every 911 an overpowered Beetle. Porsche designed a completely new body and a beautifully Teutonic and functional interior, and powered it with the Beetle's air cooled flat four pushing the light chassis. The ingredients were basic, but the outcome was a formidable, agile car which was reliable and simple, if a bit slower than the competition. This was the birth of Porsche, their first proper road car. This was the 356.

The original 356 coupé.
Picture courtesy of rennlist.com

 To be continued...