Ferdinand Porsche, a great engineer and entrepreneur, born in 1875, developed a
number of small prototype cars with 4 cylinder boxer motors during the early 1930’s.
This lead to him receiving an order from Hitler to develop a small people’s car. Porsche
delivered the first three prototypes in 1936 and 30 more test vehicles followed, which
were assembled by Mercedes-Benz. Hitler was instrumental in getting the new factory
built in 1938 and the first Volkswagen cars were supposed to be ready in 1939.
This did not happen due to the start of the Second World War in 1939. All car factories
were immediately ordered to build military vehicles, which lead to the production of
the Kübelwagen, a military adaption of the Volkswagen.
Three months after the war, in May 1945 the British facilitated the start-up of this
factory. It was a slow start, but eventually this Volkswagen car broke every other car sales
record in history.
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