TheSamba.com :: View topic - The only 2 Beetles sold in the US in 1949

Sun May 06, 2007 7:44 pm

can anyone tell me the names of the purchasers of the only two beetles sold in the US in 1949?

thanks.

Sun May 06, 2007 8:26 pm

I remember reading in an early 90's Hot VW's that General Motors had a 46 beeetle that they had supposedly bought new. The article stated that they did not actually know if they originally purchased the car or why, but it was beleived to be owned by GM!

Mon May 07, 2007 2:58 am

johnshenry wrote: Ed and Steve.

:wink:

last names?

i'll tell you why. i had a garage sale on saturday. this guy sees my beetle in the garage and proceeds to tell me "....you know in 1949, they only sold 2 volkswagens in the US....and my grandfather was one of the buyers"

i asked what his grandfather's last name was. he told me it was "Hitchman". i wanna ask him for pictures when i see him again and of course will post them up. it's cool either way if he has pictures. i'm pretty sure he was frontin'. but who knows.

Mon May 07, 2007 8:23 am

UZI wrote: can anyone tell me the names of the purchasers of the only two beetles sold in the US in 1949?

thanks.
try contacting stock steve on here. he is from conn. and i am pretty sure he has this info.

Mon May 07, 2007 8:24 am

Ask the Pon VW dealership in the Netherlands, It was Ben Pon who sold them. As far as I remember the info they were sold in New York, quite cheaply, to cover his hotel bill, though Simon Parkinson's book he says 1948 and one car,
. Pon was trying to set up a US dealership. That finally happened in 1950 with Hoffman in NY

I'll check my other books and see what they say.

Mon May 07, 2007 8:54 am

it certainly is possible that this guys grampa is one of the OG 2 being so close to NYC and all. i think he was talking smack. if his story is true, it would be awesome to get a hold of some photos. i'm sure they must have taken pictures of the car. either way, i wanna see some photos of their old beetle.

thanks and let us know what you find out.

Mon May 07, 2007 9:42 am

tubdub wrote: UZI wrote: can anyone tell me the names of the purchasers of the only two beetles sold in the US in 1949?

thanks.
try contacting stock steve on here. he is from conn. and i am pretty sure he has this info.

Sorry, don't have the slightest idea.

Mon May 07, 2007 8:13 pm

From my understanding of the history, Ben Pon brought over the first Beetle early in '49. There's a famous picture of the car being unloaded at the dock with Dutch license plates and one of the first sets of grooved bumpers. This was the car Pon had to sell to pay for his hotel bill.

The second car was brought over later in '49 by Nordhoff himself and was featured in a Made in Germany trade show.

Tue May 08, 2007 6:53 am

You would think that if the cars survived, they would surface given the shrinking of the global VW community due to the internet. It would be cool though.

Tue May 08, 2007 3:01 pm

vw57drvr wrote: You would think that if the cars survived, they would surface given the shrinking of the global VW community due to the internet. It would be cool though.

a person who claims to be the grandson of one of the supposed original purchasers/owners came to my garage sale....you just never know.

Thu Jun 28, 2007 9:47 am

Sorry for bringing up an older topic, but does anyone know which month in 49 these beetles were brought here?

Thu Jun 28, 2007 10:59 am

I believe the Pon car was brought over early in the year, and the trade show was in the summer or autumn.

Honestly, these were two cars sold in the largest metropolitan city in the world at that time, the same year nearly a million new cars were registered in the U.S. The odds of finding specific information on either of them is slim.

Thu Jun 28, 2007 12:46 pm

I believe the car was unloaded in Jan 49. That would make the car likely a 48 Beetle.

Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:39 pm

so i ran into this guy that told me the story at my garage sale. i said "hey, aren't you the guy i was talking to about VWs at my garage sale? your grandfather owned one?" he told me that he wasn't sure if it was the first year but was definately the second year because the car was a 51. :roll: i told him i love vintage photos, gimme a call if you can find some of the car. he's changed his story so we'll see. i'd still love to see the photos.

Fri Jun 29, 2007 11:12 pm

We've all heard stories like this. I talked to a guy who said he travelled to New York to buy one of Max Hoffman's first vans, and had one of the first Type 2s in the Northeast. He said they couldn't use it to make deliveries to any of the auto plants because the union boys would destroy it.

Sat Jun 30, 2007 1:04 am

During the final VVWCA Spring Meet held at the old World-Wide VW distributorship in Orangeburg, NY (1994?), a young man (early 20s) asked me if his blue '48 project with red wheels could've been painted that way at the factory.

In hindsight, since both the US and Dutch flags are red, white and blue, it wouldn't surprise me if Ben Pon had the '48 painted those colors as a marketing gimmick to promote the VW in the States and that kid's car is the real thing--it's just that everyone's been looking for two '49s over the years and not a '48 until Etzold (?) published the chassis number for this car.

Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:52 pm

Keep in mind the Pon car had chromed grooved bumpers, which is interesting, considering the car landed in the U.S. in January but the bumpers didn't become standard until June. This could be explained by the factory using up four months of existing bumper stocks which is not so unusual in the early days.

Mon Jul 02, 2007 12:57 pm

Janerick, I was also at the last WW meet; it was '95. You spelled Mr. Etzold's name correctly (Hans-Ruediger...). :)

Stories? Yeah. Good family friend has a '49 Beetle at his VW dealership; I asked if it happened to be "one of the first two official '49's" and he thought "yes".

2 years ago at a party in NW CT, a neighbor of the host told me he bought a split window Beetle, "the first year they were brought in". Turns out it was a '51, the first one sold thru the new local VW dealership New Milford Motors. He was vague on the details though. But that dealer is still around, and has always remained a single-brand dealer. It really did open around then.

Sun Jul 15, 2007 6:32 pm

We need to have a "Final VVWCA Spring Meet Reunion" some time. Nice to see you are still kicking around out there, Jan!

Steve M.

Sun Aug 26, 2007 5:38 am

You guys ment this pic? I got it out of the archives of a Dutch paper called "De Telegraaf".

Pon , has got no documentation left about the history. They donated the complete archive to LVWCN (translation: Aircooled VW Club of The Netherlands a couple of years back. I know this archive has got documents of all the cars sold thru Pon. Those documents were stored by chassisnumber and were written and kept from 1952 till 1965 .

Here`s an example of my 58 DD
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/7513/3887631024x688ym6.jpg