http://www.autoblog.com/2016/01/01/volkswagen-beetle-70th-anniversary/ 

good read

Hi Greg, Had sent a couple of PM's, you advertised your beetle a while back, is it still for sale??
Cheers
Gav

Thanks for the link Greg. All the best for this year for your family.

Thanks Gary, you too.

Thanks for the link Greg.

I must admit I first thought the information was wrong - production started at Christmas 1945, when the British took over in August? Just 55 cars produced in 1945, when I've seen figures of 1,785 for 1945?

The factory still had 600 workers when the British took over; 1,100 a month later and over 6,000 by the end of 1945. They can't have been sitting around doing nothing. So what is the discrepancy?

In fact from German surrender in May to the British taking over, the factory only built Kubelwagens - 138 in June, 235 in July and 136 in August. But the Ambi-Budd body works were in the now Soviet sector of Berlin and supplies dried up. Only 11 were made in September, and just one each in October and December. 522 Kubels were built at Wolfsburg in 1945.

Another vehicle the factory was making in 1945 was the Type 51, the KdF body on Kubel chassis. Production began in August 1945 under British control, and 703 had been built by the end of the year.

In 1945 VW also built 713 of the Type 93 closed trailers; 275 Type 83 saloon-based closed delivery vans; and 219 of the Type 28 Kubel-based delivery van.

As for the basic Volkswagen saloon, just 58 were made in 1945 (not 55 as the article says). Just one was assembled from spares in August 1945, and single examples in October and November. In December 55 were made. This explains why the press release says 'December 1945' was when production began, which is true in a general sense. But Beetles had been built earlier, and the official 1,785 production for 1945 does include those Kubel-based Beetles.

(These figures all come from Jonathan Wood's 'The VW Beetle' book, as well as Walter Henry Nelson's 'Small Wonder' and K.P. Hopfinger's 'Beyond Expectation').

The British counted the 1,000th VW being built in March 1946 - so by that stage they weren't counting the earlier Kubel-based Beetles and specials as part of the overall total.

VW was always specific about having built exactly 21,529,464 up to the end of production in Mexico in 2003. But I've always wondered whether they included the war-time and post-war Kubels and Kubel-based specials? Or, in fact, whether the 260,055 built in Australia are included? Who knows.

But if it was built after August 1945 it would be a 1946 model? (joke)