"Oversleeping" sometimes has its good side
04/22/2020
In the 1960s in particular, Volkswagen was often accused of building an old-fashioned car with the Beetle, which seemed to be running away from the competition. But the Beetle sold brilliantly and apparently won over buyers more than some of the more innovative cars from other brands. It got to the point where even German Finance Minister Franz-Josef Strauss accused the Volkswagen factory of having overslept the development curve.
Volkswagen, in turn, was not prepared to put up with this and opened up its pool of prototypes to the Spiegel editors Glismann and Simoneit. The picture above (© Der Spiegel) shows a selection of these prototypes. It was also printed in the 11/1967 issue of auto motor und sport. There was also the comment:
" Only very rarely did VW prototypes come to light - in the photos published by auto motor und sport in recent years, the factory regularly denied that they were official factory developments. In some cases, however, production had already been prepared. Two years ago, Nordhoff stopped the start of series production of a successor to the Beetle at the last moment, and no new VW will be on show at the IAA this fall either. The reason: the Beetle VW is selling too well. The VW 1600 has a better chance of a successor, but none of the cars shown here - including a 2-liter rear-engined six-cylinder (last row left) - will take over its role. The scrap press awaits them, as they all failed to make the decisive step onto the market. This makes them symbolic not only of the diligence of the Wolfsburg development department, but also of VW's hesitant type policy."
Well, today, more than 50 years later, it has to be said that none of the prototypes shown in the picture would have been able to compete with the later VW Golf, even if the VW developers had certainly come up with one or two interesting technical tricks back then.
