Volkswagen, shortened to VW, is a German motor vehicle manufacturer founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front, known for the iconic Beetle and headquartered in Wolfsburg. It is the flagship brand of the Volkswagen Group, the largest carmaker by worldwide sales in 2016 and 2017.
The group's biggest market is in China, which delivers 40% of its sales and profits. Popular models of Volkswagen include Golf, Jetta, Passat, Atlas, and Tiguan. The German term Volk translates to people, thus Volkswagen translates to people's car.
Volkswagen was established in 1937 by the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) in Berlin.
In the early 1930s, cars were a luxury -most Germans could afford nothing more elaborate than a motorcycle and only one German out of 50 owned a car.
Seeking a potential new market, some carmakers began independent people's car projects -the Mercedes 170H, BMW 3/15, Adler AutoBahn, Steyr 55, and Hanomag 1.3L, among others.
War changed production to military vehicles -the Type 82 Kübelwagen, utility vehicle, VW's most common wartime model, and the amphibious Schwimmwagen -manufactured for German forces.
The company owes its post-war existence largely to one man, wartime British Army officer Major Ivan Hirst, REME.
In April 1945, KdF-Stadt and its heavily bombed factory were captured by the Americans and subsequently handed over to the British, within whose occupation zones the town and factory fell.
From 1948, Volkswagen became an important element, symbolically and economically, of West German regeneration.
More information: Volkswagen
Heinrich Nordhoff (1899-1968), a former senior manager at Opel who had overseen civilian and military vehicle production in the 1930s and 1940s, was recruited to run the factory in 1948.
In 1949, Major Hirst left the company -now re-formed as a trust controlled by the West German government and government of the State of Lower Saxony.
The Beetle sedan or peoples' car Volkswagen is the Type 1. Apart from the introduction of the Volkswagen Type 2 commercial vehicle (van, pick-up, and camper), and the VW Karmann Ghia sports car, Nordhoff pursued the one-model policy until shortly before his death in 1968.
VW expanded its product line in 1961 with the introduction of four Type 3 models (Karmann Ghia, Notchback, Fastback, and Variant) based on the new Type 3 mechanical underpinnings. The name Squareback was used in the United States for the Variant.
While Volkswagen's range of cars soon became similar to that of other large European carmakers, the Golf has been the mainstay of the Volkswagen line-up since its introduction, and the mechanical basis for several other cars of the company. There have been eight generations of the Volkswagen Golf, the first of which was produced from the summer of 1974 until the autumn of 1983.
In 1991, Volkswagen launched the third-generation Golf, which was European Car of the Year for 1992. The Golf Mk3 and Jetta Mk3 arrived in North America in 1993. The sedan version of the Golf was badged Vento in Europe but remained Jetta in the United States. The Scirocco and the later Corrado were both Golf-based coupés.
The sixth-generation VW Golf was launched in 2008, came runner-up to the Opel/Vauxhall Insignia in the 2009 European Car of the Year, and has spawned several cousins: VW Jetta, VW Scirocco, SEAT León, SEAT Toledo, Škoda Octavia and Audi A3 hatchback ranges, as well as a new mini-MPV, the SEAT Altea.
In 2017, Volkswagen announced plans to place a considerable focus on electric vehicles (EV), with a goal to, by 2025, launch at least 30 EV models, and have 20 to 25 percent of their total yearly sales volume (2-3 million) consist of EVs.
In September, Volkswagen CEO Matthias Müller stated that the company aimed to have electric versions of all of its vehicle models by 2030, at a cost of 20 billion euro, and 50 billion euro on acquisition of batteries.
In November 2020, Volkswagen announced that, trying to remain the world's largest carmaker in the green era, it has increased its investment in electric and self-driving cars to $86 billion over the next five years.
More information: VW
Lara Flynn Boyle
No comments:
Post a Comment