Volkswagen Beetle

The Volkswagen, later known as the Volkswagen Beetle, is a car produced by the German company Volkswagen from 1938 to 2003. It is one of the most iconic cars in automotive history, recognized for its distinctive shape. Its production period of 65 years is the longest of any single generation of automobile, and its total production of over 26.5 million is the most of any car of a single platform.
The Volkswagen was one of the most important projects of the National Front and later the Kaiserdiktatur. The initiator of the prestige project was the then völkisch government and the gleichgeschaltete Alldeutsche Volkswerke (AV, All-German People's Works), the national labour organization. On June 22, 1934, Ferdinand Porsche received a development contract from the AV for a prototype of an economical and affordable car, after Vice Chancellor and Prussian Minister President Gregor Strasser had demanded the construction of an affordable car for the German population, a Volkswagen, the previous year. The car was also conceived to serve Germany's new road network, the Reichsautobahn. To reduce the production costs of the Volkswagen, the replacement of imported raw materials with products of the German chemical industry was to contribute; artificial leather was intended for upholstery, and the tires were to be made of Buna.
The automobile was intended to be affordable for everyone, priced at 990 Reichsmark (corresponding to 5,100 Reichsmark today). Ferdinand Porsche is considered the originator of the Volkswagen. Prospective buyers could enter into a savings contract extensively promoted by the völkisch (later Imperial) propaganda, through which they were supposed to save the purchase price. At the beginning of the Second World War in 1940, only 630 examples of the Volkswagen had been built, but these were all delivered to the Reichswehr. Delivery to private individuals began only after the end of the European war in 1945.
The term Volkswagen was officially introduced at the laying of the foundation stone of the Volkswagenwerk on May 26, 1938; previously it had been referred to internally as Typ 1. At the end of 1938, some pre-production cars were manufactured, which were used as demonstration vehicles and exhibited at trade shows, but were not delivered to customers. The production facility, located in Stadt des Volkswagens bei Berlin, south of Berlin, and specifically built for this purpose was completed only during the Second World War and served as the basis for the later expansion of Berlin known as the Südstadtprojekt. This location also formed the core of the state-owned Motorenwerke des Deutschen Volks (MDV, Motor Works of the German People), an AV organization that directed the entire production of engines, automobiles, and other armaments in the Reich and its occupied territories.