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75th Birthday of the Beetle
Ian Bugden - April 29th, 2013 at 08:37 PM

Is any Celebrations taking place for the 75th Birthday of the Beetle?

The foundation Stone was laid on the 28th of May 1938.

I though this would be a good PR opertunity for our beloved old cars.


Phil74Camper - April 30th, 2013 at 09:19 AM

As I responded on the Club events forum, it's not the 75th birthday of the Beetle. It's the 75th birthday of the laying of the Wolfsburg factory foundation stone. The factory wasn't even finished construction until 1939. The foundation stone was removed and buried in an undocumented location in the 1950s and no longer exists.

Beetle production began in 1945 thanks to the British Army - the consecutive chassis numbering used up to 1965 starts from 1945. Proir to that the small number of KdFs were mostly hand-built by the Porsche works in Stuttgart. It isn't even the 75th birthday of the Volkswagen AG company - that started in 1949 when the British handed the works back to the government of Lower Saxony.

There are celebrations for the 60th birthday of Volkswagen in Australia later this year - we are having a movie afternoon at the Hurstville Civic Theatre in July, and the VW Club of Victoria are celebrating with their Day of the Volkswagen in October.


AA003 - April 30th, 2013 at 11:33 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Phil74Camper
the VW Club of Victoria are celebrating with their Day of the Volkswagen in October.


I wonder if they are going to tell anyone about it?

Is there any information on it?


Phil74Camper - April 30th, 2013 at 12:28 PM

Club Veedub gets the VWCVIC magazine, in which president Lloyd Davies mentioned they are moving the DOVW from Nov to Oct, especially for the 60th anniversary of VW in Australia. There's a bit of info on their website, but I guess more will come as we get closer (Sat 19 Oct). But at this stage it sounds great - a cruise down Tullamarine Fwy to the former VW factory at Clayton. Looks like they are going to play 'Shape of Quality' on the day. A great idea - we are going to do that at Hurstville Civic in July, plus the Antarctica 1 films, plus 1955 Redex (stay tuned)

http://www.vwclub.com.au/ 

As for the Wolfsburg factory, the cornerstone was laid on 26 May 1938 (not 28th), and marked the start of the construction of the plant (NOT the car). It was still uncompleted when the war began in September 1939, and planned production of KdFs was postponed in favour of military vehicles and war materiel. This website shows wartime aerial shots of the factory, taken by the US army air force after a bombing raid:

http://www.airrecce.co.uk/WW2/imagery/Wolfsburg/USAAF_Wolfsburg.html 


AA003 - April 30th, 2013 at 12:35 PM

That's November to October.

I wish that they could make some decisions a bit early so that interstate people could attend.:td:

At least Valla and the Nationals let you know.

Not everyone can get time off work at the last minute.