Evolution car body

Adolf Hitler laid the foundation stone of the factory

When ready, the car fully satisfied Adolf Hitler but it was obvious that the price he had set (900 Marks) could not be met. The lowest that it could be kept down to was 990 Marks, this included the cost of two years’ guarantee and maintenance. In actual fact the price finally rose to 1.240 Marks of which 900 were production costs, 200 were two years guarantee and 50 were delivery charges. The car could only be bought for 1,240 Marks by members of the Labour Front. The cost to non-members was in proportion to their income as assessed by the same Labour Front. The delivery or transport charge could be avoided by collecting it directly from the factory. To facilitate this bus services were set up between the country’s major centres and Wolfsburg.
It was also decided that the capital would be put up by the workers themselves through a weekly levy of 5 Marks (or 10 or 15 according to their means). By this method of finance the 336,668 workers raised, through their contributions, no less than 280 million Marks.
On May 26, 1938 Adolf Hitler laid the foundation stone of the factory. Then the war broke out and the entire production of the Wolfsburg factory (designed to be 150,000 units per year) went to the Wehrmacht. In fact, Volkswagen did not even produce 60,000 cars and derivatives during the whole war and American military sources place the total at little more than 48,000.