Earliest design influence for the beetle trivia question

[Hebster52]

Even Mercedes Benz made their version in 1934...
https://www.cms.daimlerchrysler.com/emb_classic/0,...-1,00.html

And again in 1936:
https://www.cms.daimlerchrysler.com/emb_classic/0,...-1,00.html

Even a rearengine roadster in 1935-36...

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~Kris~
The Hebster52
The 912ST
The KidVRod project
The 356 Pre-A replica,SOLD
The 1966 Kommanderwagen, SOLD
The Doppel -67, SOLD
The Singlecab -72, SOLD

[erioco]

I agree with Gary's basic points, many were thinking about this small car question after WWI in central Europe: Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc. A large group of independently operating designers were working on the whole idea, and were working in parrallel lines: Porsche, Ganz, the list is endless. Many knew each other and talked to each other about the ideas, especially those from the former Austrian empire, since they had run into each other often before WWI. Germany had the odd bottleneck that they had the lowest per capita automobile ownership in Europe, but with a huge potential market if the economy would stabalize and a good low cost car were made available, something which the major German auto makers mostly ignored. The other new countries on the other hand were working on the idea full bore, but had much smaller potential local markets based purely on population levels.

The one points that most of these designers came to were: rear engine, air cooled, tubular central backbone chassis base, and small engine capacity. This latter forced the final design point:
low coeficient of drag/ low weight. When you get into the coefficient of drag, you were in the fastback shape world and into the Rumpler, Jary and Kamm worlds (there were others as well, just couldn't remember their names at this moment).

The big result was similar layouts, specs and shapes, not to mention patent disputes with overlapping claims. I don't realyy think you can say anyone really invented certain approaches, they developed these approaches along side, on top of, and inspite of each other.

PS the East front foto of damaged vehicles the car in the rear is the predecesser of the 404 Peugeot ( may well have had the same number before the war too) Peugeot and Fiat were the two big makers of cars with the headlights behind the front grill on smaller models. The Germans took many private cars from their owners and used them officially in the military, usually for middle and upper military bigwigs.

Read about a Frenchman who lost his new big Citroen to a German Airforce general early in the war in Paris. He got a reciept too. He wrote the car off in his mind and lived with it. In 44 as Paris was falling to the Allies, the chauffer showed up at his door, presented the thanks of the German General and gave the very surprised Frenchman the car keys, the car in excellent shape and all the wartime trip logbooks for the car, as well as the fender flagpoles and flags I think. He still had the car in the early 80's still in German military livery etc. The car had been all over western Europe and as far east as latvia and parts of the Russian front, where-ever the Germans had airfields.
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Radclyffe Roadster Replica proj based on an April 47 chassis

[SplitPersonality]

Very interesting thread. Underlining an aspect of automotive design history not so often talked about. Designwise the Beetle was absolutely a product of its time, not a revolution in tis time...as often believed.

The Airflow is interesting, all the early Porsche Design projects are very interesting, the first Merecdes 130H (1934), Hanomag 1300 (1937) and all the early Tatras. Another piece of history:

From 1928 to 1931 Porsche was chief engineer at Steyr in Austria. Here he met Komenda, among others. Steyr was really a Mercedes-competitor and made large, luxurious and expensive automobiles. Porsche argued "hard" for a european car for the masses, inspired by the Model T and old Henry. A cheap, economic and hence small and aerodynamical car. Steyr bosses would not listen. Until he left - in 1931 to start his own business. Then Steyr woke up...pulled out Ferdinands old ideas and napkin-sketches...and in late 1933 launched the Steyr "Baby" - the Type 50. A Beetle grandfather good as any...

[img]http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=243444[/img]
[/img]

[Doc*181]

http://www.ganz-volkswagen.org/

Joseph Ganz (1898-1967) was a pioneer in the creation of the Volkswagen concept in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. Born in Budapest, Joseph Ganz moved to Germany in 1916 where he started his higher education. As a qualified engineer he soon started working as a motoring journalist and automotive designer in the mid-1920s.
Joseph Ganz promoted the concept of a cheap, reliable car with very good driving abilities in his journalistic writings and called for the development of a Volkswagen by the German motoring industry. He even laid down the technical concept with a rear-mounted engine, swing axles, independent suspension, a backbone chassis and a streamlined body. But when the motoring industry failed to develop it, Ganz took the matter on himself and built several prototypes and production cars in the early 1930s. He also worked as a consultant engineer for such companies as Daimler-Benz, BMW and Adler and was the editor in chief of Motor-Kritik magazine.

But as an opponent of the old-fashioned motoring industry and being of a Jewish family, Ganz got into serious trouble with certain members of the newly established nazi-government in Germany. They stopped at nothing to try and destroy his career and stop the production of his Volkswagens. Even though Joseph Ganz survived the war in Switzerland, these people were so succesful that today he is almost completely forgotten and left out of written automotive history. Ferdinand Porsche is generally seen as the sole inventor of the Volkswagen. Joseph Ganz died in Australia in 1967, where he'd fled more or less out of desperation in 1951.

[Kafer Wolf]

[79SuperVert]

Not quite. From this angle it looks a lot less beetle-like:

[allsidius]

It is well documented that Ferdinand went to US in 1936 and 37, and that he stayed with Henry Ford and his organisation for a long time. At the same time, Edsel Ford had just launched the 1936 Lincoln Zephyr V12, which has a lot of styling clues inherited by the VW303/38 prototypes. The wooden mockup of the VW303 was ready in november 1937. The Zephyr was based on the Briggs Dream car, a rear engined super slippery concept car, that was tidied up by the Lincoln Stylists, and had the engine relocated in the process. The Airflow at the beginning of this thread has some interesting similarities to the beetle, but the Lincoln Zephyr really have all the details that Ferdinand and Ferry must have studied. Like the rear window, front doors, front window, front fenders, rear decklid etc. There is even a 1939 drawing (made after the VW design was final) where Komenda plays with the rear side window dropping a bit like on the Zephyr, obviously sketched in to play with the design. Fortunately they kept the straight bottom line of the windows. When I learn how to post pictures I'll show what I am talking about.

[SplitPersonality]

[IIIA-0426]

I think it is fair to say that at the time, a lot of designers / engineers were playing with aerodynamics. There was a clear school of thought in the early 30s amongst a few, including Barenyi, Ganz, Ledwinka, Porsche that streamlined rear-engined cars were the future. Aerodynamics and rear-engined backbone chassis were two elements which had evolved seperately for several years before they were packaged together as such.

Designers always look over each other's shoulders, it is human nature.

What one can say is that Porsche mastered in his field in the way that he executed the concept.

[Patty B.]

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi96.htm

No. 96:
STREAMLINE

by John H. Lienhard
Click here for audio of Episode 96.

Today, we talk about streamlining. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

The watchword of the 1930s was modern. If I knew one thing as a child, it was that I lived in the modern world. It was a world where the vertical lines of art deco were giving way to horizontal streamlined forms. Everything in the 30s, 40s, and 50s was streamlined. The Douglas DC-3 had brought streamlining to passenger airplanes. The Chrysler "Airflow" and the Lincoln "Zephyr" brought it to the automobile. Even my first bike was streamlined.

Earlier in the 20th century, the great German experts in fluid flow had shown us how to streamline bodies to reduce wind resistance. It certainly served this function when things moved fast. But my bicycle hardly qualified. Nor did the streamlined Microchef kitchen stove that came out in 1930. Bathrooms were streamlined. Tractors were streamlined. Streamlining was a metaphor for the brave new world we all lived in.

A confusion of design schools competed with each other in the early '30s. The German Bauhaus school had been scattered by the Nazis. Art deco was dying. Neither the classic-colonials nor Le Corbusier and the International School could gain ascendancy.

Then streamlining came out of this gaggle, propelled by American industry and making its simple appeal to the child in all of us. It certainly appealed to the child I was then. In reality, streamlining was a sales gimmick -- something to distract us from the tawdry realities of the depression. It told us to buy things. It told us we could all go fast. It was hardly one of the great humanist schools of design.

The Nazis and Bolsheviks used streamlining as a propaganda tool. American industry used it to make us into consumers. It fairly smelled of technocracy. It lasted 'til the 1950s, when, at last, we were all offended by its dying excesses -- the enormous tailfins and chromium structures that made the automobile ridiculous by any esthetic standard.

But I loved airplanes as a child, and the functional curved aeroform shape touched something in me. The way the gentle camber of an airfoil gave the invisible wind a handle by which to pluck a 50-ton airplane into the sky -- that was truly magical.

"When I was a child," said St. Paul, "I thought as a child." Streamlining was a childish symbol of our modern world -- now put away with other childish things. But I still sneak an occasional look back at that vision of motion, speed, and buoyancy.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)



The stream lining movement was pretty incredible---My Great Uncle even build a stream lined fireplace in his house. And he rounded the corners of his doorways. They were also influenced by new materials for building---his kitchen cabinets were made of formed sheet metal. Very cool house.

[johnshenry]

The first minivan, 1936 Stout Scarab

"The Scarab's body was a
sturdy all-aluminum tubular airframe covered with aluminum panels. It had a living room-like interior complete with fold-down table and movable reclining seats, except for the driver seat. But it was the Scarab's uniquely designed independent four-wheel suspension system that was the standout feature. To demonstrate the smoothness of the ride, Stout would place a glass of water on the fold-down table and drive the car for a distance without spilling a drop of water. He even claimed that he had driven a Scarab from Detroit to San Francisco without spilling a drop.

Other unique first-time Stout Scarab features included a rear-mounted Ford V-8 engine, thermostatically controlled heat and electric door locks. Only nine Stout Scarabs were ever built. The main drawback besides its unusual body design was its $5000 price tag, a hefty amount when compared to the average Cadillac which went for $3500. "
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John Henry

'57 Deluxe
'56 Single Cab

[Blue Baron]

[Brezelwerks]

[erioco]

It is interesting to note that the order of windows in the bug was reversed in the 60K10 Berlin Rome Racer. (type 64)

The three racing bodies built in '39 on type 38 prototype chassis had one piece wrap around oval rear windows and split front windshields (one with two flat front panes in a 'V', and two with wrap around panes in a rounder 'V' which gave better airflow). The flat front panes were on the first one built.

Eric
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Radclyffe Roadster Replica proj based on an April 47 chassis

[scoundrel]

1930'S Lincoln's. Just look close and you will see.

[gimmesomeshelter]

Gary-

[Brezelwerks]

[mircea cotiga]

I think this is the car that has influenced everybody ... and it is a decade earlier! (1922)
The first aerodynamic automobile

http://www.google.ro/imgres?imgurl=http://www.devi..._Aa2u6CmCQ
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I always know when I'm stupid, so, don't tell me!

[flyertim]

anybody here ever check out "jay leno's garage?" jay owns a tatra and the chrysler airflow. he has also driven an early benz which is pictured in hebster52's post.

www.jaylenosgarage.com

look in the "antiques" section.

here's a link to the three mercedes benz cars (it's the first video):

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/at-the-garage/antiques/

if you scroll down the same page, you will find the tatra.

if you scroll down to the bottom and click "next page," or use this link:

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/at-the-garage/antiques/index.php?page=2

the chrysler airflow can be found.

enjoy! tim
_________________
"Broadsword calling Dannyboy"

my '57 rebuild:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=369883

[Hammarlund]

This is a long thread, and while I scanned it, I may have missed something, so I apologize if somebody has already brought the following points up: