Volkswagen
Ferdinand Porsche had a background in electric vehicle propulsion with Lohner in the 1900's, later designs for Austro-Daimler, and developing the supercharged S range for Mercedes in the 1920's and father of the Auto Union Grand Prix car, provided the design of what would become the Volkswagen. Major Ivan Hirst of the British forces undertook to build the first batch of cars in 1945 at the renamed "Motor Works", production rising to a considerable 10,000 vehicles in 1946. For 1950 a Type 2 Transporter was introduced. The Beetle continued in production in Europe until 1973 after which it went to Brazil and Mexico when 1970 saw the arrival of Volkswagens front wheel drive water cooled K70, the product of purchasing the Audi company. This new design ethos led on to the Passat (1973), Golf and Scirocco (1974), Polo (1975) and Jetta (1979).
Who would have thought that the car Henry Ford rejected, with nobody outside of Germany being interested in taking it over, would go on to sell well over 21 million cars in it's various forms. Or to show the scale of this, if each car took even only one minute to make that would take 40 years!
