The dominance of the VW Beetle
06/22/2021
Sometimes one wonders why the VW Beetle has this special status in German-speaking countries today.
Well, the registration statistics from back then provide an answer. Today, it is hard to believe that 321,288 of the 1,120,675 cars registered in Germany in 1962 were VW Beetles 1200. In other words, 28.7 percent of all new cars were Beetles, while the entire and much broader Opel product range from Kadett to Kapitän sold just 177,852 units. Ford performed even worse in comparison at that time.
Volkswagen completely dominated the 1000 to 1499 cc class with 59.5 percent of the cars delivered. And this class was also the most popular, accounting for 56.8 percent of registrations.
At that time, there was simply no way around Volkswagen and its market share was even declining, because in 1961 VW had still sold 35.4 percent of all cars in Germany. By 1962, this figure had fallen to 33.8 percent.
So it's no wonder that practically everyone who was alive at the time had ridden in a Beetle at some point or even owned one themselves. And the fact that the Beetle was omnipresent on the roads should come as no surprise in view of these statistics.
Such dominance of one vehicle type and one brand would be almost unthinkable today.
While we are on the subject of statistics, which were incidentally printed in issue 8/1963 of auto motor und sport : NSU delivered 29,694 examples of the Prinz III, Prinz 4 and Sportprinz in 1962. BMW sold 23,420 700s. And Skoda sold just 1128 cars. Even Simca was more successful with the Aronde and the Ariane, with 2018 cars sold.
