I'm not sure whether that was initally the State or private interests: someone may be able to enlighten us.
Volkswagen was offered to Rootes group and Ford in the US, both declined. Henry Ford II famously said "I don't think what we're being offered here is worth a damn" Oops....
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When comparing the cars of 53 with 2006 you also have to bear in mind the roads of 53, and the other traffic on them. The roads were mostly appalling, and if you got stuck behind a lorry belching fumes then you coulds be there for hours, as overtaking opportunities/dual sections were very rare.
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Finding out what new cars were produced in 1953 can be discovered at:
www.britishmm.co.uk/history.asp?id=81
Will stir some memories...:-)
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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I agree with PU. If the VW existing at the end of WW2 had gone to Ford or the Rootes Group it would have been run into the ground. The crucial relationship between VW and Porsche would have ended, and Porsche might not have been able to establish itself as a manufacturer.
The Germans were hungry, traumatised and defeated. It made them rational.
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It made them (the workers and middle management) compliant.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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More to it than that TVM. Made the top management listen to engineers, a category that was all too 'compliant' in the fat-cat, bean-counter dominated industry here. It stayed like that until it imploded. VW is still with us, fairly healthy I believe?
Try to remember how carp most of the products were here in the fifties.
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Lets not get moist eyed here. The Beetle was carp and It always was. Stone age stuff. It was however well made carp.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Lets not get moist eyed here. The Beetle was carp and It always was. Stone age stuff. It was however well made carp. >>
So you watched The Love Bug yet again over the weekend..:-)
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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It's true all cars, or most of them, were more carp then than now.
But the Beetle was different and original, a really modern mid-thirties car, not a dressed-up, insufficiently developed one.
Do you remember that Ford Anglias and Prefects had beam front axles well into the fifties? And could hardly reach 60?
A Beetle 1200 could be cruised flat out at around 75 all day long. I'm not at all sure an Austin Devon could be.
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Yes lud there is more to it than that. It made *everyone* in Germany compliant. Workers, engineers, management, - everyone. They all lived in fear on several counts and for multiple reasons. BUt we are not here for social comments. Back to the car. VW was in queer street in the 70s. They had the beetle with massively falling sales, every model they had tried to produce instead had bombed badly, really badly, the company was on its knees.
Then they launched the Golf. Funnily enough the golf appeared when Germany got confident, and stopped being quite so compliant, the fear had gone and a new generation was appearing.
As I said lets not put the Beetle on a pedestal, it was an obomination. Ok it sold in big numbers, but so did haemorrhoid cream.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Well TVM you're entitled to yr opinion of course but I can't agree that the Beetle is an abomination. Perhaps its success led to its being retained too long as the main model, and of course by the sixties the whole game had moved on a bit.
Nor would I want to put the Beetle or indeed VW on any kind of pedestal. They are what they are.
All I can say is, for a stone age abomination the thing outsold and outperformed in service a whole lot of later, ostensibly more modern designs.
Do you really think that was because people were misty eyed about the Beetle and put VW on a pedestal?
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well look at it like this.
why did all the east germans run around in Trabants? Ask yourself that question, and then look at the choices the west germans had (remember this is 1948 - 1970)
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Come come TVM, the thing sold worldwide, not just in West Germany. Including here. And went on and on selling, worldwide. Big favourite in US. Much appreciated for ruggedness in Africa and elsewhere.
I've never owned a Beetle, not one that I could make run anyway. Never really wanted one either. But nor have I ever seen it as anything but an all-time automotive classic - sorry to use that word - designed by the flawed engineering genius Ferdinand Porsche.
The other wonderful modern thirties popular-car designs were the Lancia Aprilia (front narrow-angle V4, rear four-speed crashbox, monocoque construction with all-independent suspension), and the Citroen Light Fifteen (my first car one of those, absolutely loved it).
The one I'd really like is the Lancia, but there were so few and the car was so rust-prone that to get one now wouldn't be easy or cheap.
Compare these advanced devices with the waddling vintage-style carp, with separate chassis and flexible, expensive, built-up bodywork being produced at the bottom end of the market here in the thirties. Really you haven't got a leg to stand on.
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Dont even whisper the words "Light 15" ( drool ) in the same conversation as the beetle lud, or you will incur my displeasure.
Its sold because it went on for so long. Sold in the states because it was dirt cheap and deemed "chic" by the yoof, it sold here because it was "cheap" it sold in large numbers in the third world because it was cheap.
Move on a bit, the the 60s compare what ford was offering cortina, or austin - mini and then what was coming out of VW - why its still the old beetle. you seriously compare those two?
And even - compare the light 15, the 2cv and the DS to the beetle.
Get thee gone satan
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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You have disarmed me somewhat with your pro-Citroen remarks, TVM! Nevertheless I stand by mine.
Do you have some personal reason for yr dislike of the Beetle? I knew at least two people in the fifties and sixties who rolled new Beetles belonging to their fathers, with consequent embarrassment. But I am afraid it was the fault of their muppety driving, not of Herr Professor Porsche's most successful design.
The Beetle wasn't especially cheap actually. But it was terrific value for money, unlike so many of the sad chrome-bedecked confections that were foisted on us between the end of the war and about 1970.
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Among the more interesting (OK, perhaps only to me!!) of the many sticks with which you could beat the beastly Beetle is its dangerous aerodynamic instability.
Unlike most cars which react by turning in towards a sidewind*, thus reducing its effect, the air cooled monstrosity under scrutiny actually turns away, thus strengthening the effect of the sidewind! In technical terms, the centre of pressure lies forward of the neutral steer point - ghastly.
Sorry Lud, but I side with RF on this point.
Number_Cruncher
* because of the forward motion (here assumed Northward) of the car, even a pure West to East wind will be felt by the car as if coming from the North West
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In technical terms, the centre of pressure lies forward of the neutral steer point
I've heard this quoted before, but I think it's wrong (first time I've spotted a mistake from Number_Cruncher!)
There was an experiment done in the late 60s where a huge tailfin was put on a Beetle mounted about 10 feet behind the rear bumper, it looked like a helicopter! The car was run past some film prop wind machines to generate cross winds and the suspension movement was measured. It had no effect whatsoever so the centre of pressure thing is not part of the issue.
The main problem is because of the swing axle rear suspension and the wing-shaped bodyshell, crosswinds just cause more lift and when the body lifts the rear suspension gets more of its naughty positive camber. The roll axis gets steeper (front suspension roll centre is at ground level) and one twitch of the steering wheel makes it all go pear shaped.
I now return you to TVM's rant ;-)
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> Herr Professor Porsche's most successful design.
Ye gods Lud you know how to poke an open wound. A design so succesful that the next 50 years would be spent trying to engineer out its most basic design fault. That is weight distribuiton and stability. Think of how all that engineering effort could have been better spent.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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the next 50 years wouldbe spent trying to engineer out its most basic design fault.
Would anyone have bothered though TVM if the thing was as fundamentally carp as you want us to believe?
Any red-blooded driver takes a tail-happy car as an enjoyable challenge, and lots of impecunious enthusiasts have enjoyed their Beetles for that reason alone. But its success and classic status come from four things that were very new when the car was designed:
Monocoque construction
All independent suspension
Air cooling for lightness and simplicity
Long-lasting, smooth-revving flat four layout
If I say any more I am going to start repeating myself, so unless someone says something very tempting I am going to shut up now.
If opinions didn't differ this website would be fairly boring, innit? I must say I've enjoyed this one.
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Monocoque construction
Err, it has a backbone chassis, not monocoque - the chassis and body were bolted together.
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Err, it has a backbone chassis, not monocoque - the chassis and body were bolted together.
Just to tidy up, can we agree on 'semi-monocoque', Garethj? A proper chassis could have a seat mounted on it and be driven, but this floorpan-with-central-backbone-channel would have been very floppy without its body, cd. probably be rolled about on a factory floor and that's about all. In fact the Aprilia may have had the same sort of construction.
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Just to tidy up, can we agree on 'semi-monocoque', Garethj?
Alright then, seeing as it's you
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Thanks Gareth - much more interesting than I had previously thought!
I hadn't heard of, or read about the experiment you mention. Where did you read of this work?
>>first time I've spotted a mistake from Number_Cruncher!
Ah!, you can't have been reading closely enough!! ;-)
Cheers,
Number_Cruncher
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I hadn't heard of, or read about the experiment you mention. Where did you read of this work?
It's a book about engine tuning, I think it's called 'How to Hotrod VW engines' and was written in the late 60s. Usefully they dyno tested an engine, changed one part then dyno tested it again, changed another part etc etc. It was to get away from the insane claims made by performance car magazines and advertisers at the time.
Drag racing Beetles were getting up to 130mph plus at the end of the quarter mile by then, and in a lightened car they were very close to taking off! Factor in a headwind or crosswind and it's a big problem.
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Well OK, NC, but I never said it was a handling paragon (which the Light 15 and Aprilia were, by the standards of the day).
In my experience, and I've driven a few of them, all rear-engined cars get a bit skittish in strong side winds.
The excellent Bill Boddy, who edited Motor Sport when it was worth reading, swore by his swing-axle Beetles because they could be cruised fast, very unlike British cars in the fifties which didn't take well to it. He didn't stop using Beetles until he got a Morris 1100. Of course by that time British cars were just beginning to take drivers' requirements seriously. But I would add from my own experience that the 1100, while it felt all right in normal fast driving on dry roads, could reveal some very peculiar handling characteristics in damp conditions.
The point about the Beetle was that it had its own characteristics - something interesting in itself to a proper car freak - and people could learn to drive it without drama. Obviously muppets, and the very unlucky, could come to grief in it as they can in any car.
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The point about the Beetle was that it had its own characteristics - something interesting in itself to a proper car freak -
Well I think we stop there Lud, only a car freak could take such an apparent dislike to a hunk of steel and rubber.
My father had one BTW, I drove it a lot. There is no doubt you had to work at driving this thing properly, but it offended my ears and eyes.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Sorry you didn't enjoy it more TVM. Matter of taste obviously.
I hate the VW Polo but lots of people think it's all right.
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quite right Lud - insipid little car, with no real purpose other than to fill a marketing gap and designed that way.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I guess you won't be going to Bug Fest this year then TVM
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Nothing against Officers, A long line of them precede me in the PU family tree (pater being the last) - no offence meant. Henry Ford though....? What's the coolest machine to be seen in an M reg Trannie or a VW Camper ?
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