Volkswagens Of The World

A comprehensive guide to all the Volkswagens not built in Germany and the unusual ones that were. Covers type designations, chassis numbers, VW options and much more.

At the Berlin Auto Show in 1938, Adolf Hitler presented the prototype for a small, oddly shaped, inexpensive family car that all good Aryans could enjoy. Decades later, that automobile—the Volkswagen Beetle—was one of the most beloved in the world. Bernhard Rieger examines culture and technology, politics and economics, and industrial design and advertising genius to reveal how a car commissioned by Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche became an exceptional global commodity on a par with Coca-Cola. Beyond its quality and low cost, the Beetle’s success hinged on its uncanny ability to capture the imaginations of people across nations and cultures. In West Germany, it came to stand for the postwar “economic miracle” and helped propel Europe into the age of mass motorization. In the United States, it was embraced in the suburbs, and then prized by the hippie counterculture as an antidote to suburban conformity. As its popularity waned in the First World, the Beetle crawled across Mexico and Latin America, where it symbolized a sturdy toughness necessary to thrive amid economic instability. Drawing from a wealth of sources in multiple languages, The People’s Car presents an international cast of characters—executives and engineers, journalists and advertisers, assembly line workers and car collectors, and everyday drivers—who made the Beetle into a global icon. The Beetle’s improbable story as a failed prestige project of the Third Reich which became a world-renowned brand illuminates the multiple origins, creative adaptations, and persisting inequalities that characterized twentieth-century globalization.

Covers the numerous Volkswagen trucks and cars used by the Wehrmacht during WWII. AUTHOR:

Little Eva: The Story of a Rusty VW is the amazing tale of one little car and the life it led. From its beginnings in the VW factory through war, homes, hippies, junkyards until finally being "found" Eva leads a life that entrances everyone who reads it.

See the entire chronology of air-cooled Volkswagens in The Complete Book of Classic Volkswagens, a beautifully illustrated overview of one of the oldest and best-known foreign car brands in America.

The world's most popular car, Volkswagen-or "the People's Car"-has earned its place in history. The VW Beetle chronicles the development and rise to worldwide popularity of the famed "punch-buggy," invented in Germany in the 1930s. This peculiar history includes the makings of all models, engines, and body styles through 1967-and the key people responsible for its development.

The first history of the German multinational's resounding failure in its global development project of a cattle ranch in the Brazilian Amazon.

A comprehensive guide to all the Volkswagens not built in Germany and the unusual ones that were. Includes VW type designations, chassis numbers, VW options, buggies, military, police, utility vehicles and all the lesser known models produced by VW around the world.