Production line numbers/chassis numbers

Anyone one know if there is a way to cross check the production line number that was stamped on the left hand side of the engine bulkhead (started MKA ?????) and the chassis number which was stamped on the right.

Not sure how long this MKA number was used, but both numbers were definitely in use for the earlier buses, when Martin & King were assembling the CKDs in the mid to lates 50s before the Aussie factory was built.



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The Martin and King factory WAS the VW factory. Martin and King were contracted by Regent Motors to assemble the CKD kits from mid-1954. In 1955 Regent Motors created a subdivision called Volkswagen (Australia) Pty Ltd, which continued to contract Martin and King to assemble the kits.

In 1957 a new company called Volkswagen (Australasia) Pty Ltd was created, using German capital. It was 51% owned by VW Germany, with the rest shared between Regent Motors, Sydney's LNC Industries, and Clyde Industries, the railway company that owned Martin and King. The new company bought the Martin and King factory and started enlarging it ten-fold to start full local production by 1960.

No, there are no records of MKA numbers nowadays (they were also used on Beetles). All those sorts of records were thrown out years ago, as the Australian VW company changed owners in 1968, then again in 1987, 1991, 1993 and 2001. Each new owner threw out lots of stuff. There is not even any record of what chassis numbers were used on Australian vehicles - not even Wolfsburg has any records.

With your knowledge Phil, have you ever come up with rough numbers of each type of VW built in Australian factories?

wombatventures wrote:With your knowledge Phil, have you ever come up with rough numbers of each type of VW built in Australian factories?

Disappointing that no one had the foresight to look after the records - who knows, maybe one day they will turn up in a dusty filing cabinet!:

Thanks for the info though

The late Bill Moore (Country Buggy Bill) had some Australian production records, but very incomplete. He actually went to the archives at Wolfsburg and looked, but they have no Aussie production records. Jurgen Seil used to work for LNC Industries also has some rudimentary annual totals. He is now retired, lives on the mid-north coast and is involved with the Tea Gardens Motorfest. Some Melbourne guys also have some incomplete records, usually handed down from men who once worked at the Clayton plant. There are some production totals in Rod and Lloyd Davies' book 'The Forgotten Story', but only for a few years and only overall totals. No one has anything like complete year-by-year production records, broken down by type.

I came across these limitations many years ago when I was researching the Australian VW history. The only thing I could do was locate annual SALES figures, which I found in old annual reports of the Chamber of Auto Industries. You can find these in the State Libraries of NSW and VIC, and the National Library in Canberra. There are also some VWA and LNC annual reports too if you look hard enough. The figures I found are published, year by year, in the VW history pages here:

http://www.clubvw.org.au/history

Click on the 5-year block you are interested in, and the sales figures for that year are at the bottom of each year.

Because they were published by the FCAI, according to their own classifications, there are limitations to these figures. For example, they never recorded a model called 'Beetle - they recorded sales for the 'VW1200' and 'VW1300'. There was no breakdown between Deluxe and Standard. From 1963 you'll also see 'VW1500', which was the Type 3. No info on how many were sedans, wagons or fastbacks - that info doesn't exist. From 1968, when the Beetle went to a 1500 engine, they still just recorded sales for 'VW1500'. BUT - that must also include Type 3 models. Sadly there is no way of knowing how many of the 'VW 1500' were Type 1 and Type 3. Same from 1971-74 when 'VW1600' must include both Superbug and Type 3.

Likewise Transporters - no way of knowing how many were vans, Kombis, Microbuses or pickups. It's a shame, but there it is. Even today, VFACTS does not say how many Golf totals are petrols or diesels, or how many are GTIs. We only know how many 'Golfs' were sold.

Yes it's sad but it wasn't a case of foresight - it was purely multiple changes of ownership. When VW Australasia was dissolved in 1968 and replaced by 'Motor Producers' Ltd, and LNC Industries in Sydney taking over distribution and sales, the Clayton plant was stripped out and converted to assembly only. The Clayton 'Plant 2' that used to be the admin office and parts store was emptied and sold (and later demolished for a new industrial estate). Lots of stuff was apparently dumped at Dandenong tip. And whatever survived would have been thrown out when Nissan took ownership of the plant in 1976-77. Today it's been split into a Linfox depot and the HSV works. As for the Sydney office, it closed in 1987 when LNC lost the VW franchise and they went out of business in 1990. That site was also demolished and is now a business park. Ateco only had the VW franchise for 2 years and had no historical VW stuff at all. Likewise TKM, and Inchcape, that followed. Today's VW Group Australia has only existed since 2001. They have no historial records and they come to US for historical info!

What I'm trying to say is that no, there are no dusty filing cabinets of VW stuff waiting to be found. They were all destroyed or disposed of long ago.

Disappointing to hear Phil. Your knowledge is awesome.
The History on the ClubVW site is really interesting and a good read.

There's still a few interesting things to find in the big libraries. I have copied all the Volkswagen Australasia Ltd annual reports (1960-68), and the LNC Industries annual report to shareholders, from about 1958 to 1978. All these are in the National Library in Canberra. They're not too difficult to find and request, but it takes time. Much of the info I found was used in the history articles - glad you like them.

The only other possible source of period info would be the families of people who worked there at the time. I managed to get copies of all the 1960s VW press releases from motoring journalist Pedr Davis, and quite a few staff magazines and periodicals from an old guy who once worked for Lanock Motors. The late Bill Moore did the same, from other ex-Lanocks/LNC staff. Most of them have passed away by now.

There may still be historial material to be discovered. It would be interesting to find the families of Lionel Spencer in Melbourne, the guy who started VW imports in 1953. Or the family of Allan Gray, who was the boss of VWA from 1955 to 1967. Even the family of 1955 and 1957 Trials Champion Laurie Whitehead, who was originally a motoring journaist at the Melbourne Herald and later ran his own VW dealership at St Kilda. He would have passed away many years ago, but who knows if his family might still have some VW stuff? Likewise in Sydney, it would be interesting to find the family of Doug Donaldson, the boss of LNC Industries and VW Australia from 1968 to 1986. There may still be historical VW material to be found by keen investigators if you can track the families down.