Our familiar history is that after Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, put forward the concept and demand of "people's car", ferdinand porsche's team completed the design in 1938 based on Hitler's concept of "people's car". This is the Volkswagen Beetle, the official name is Volkswagen 1, which is a practical car with reasonable price and enough for ordinary people.
However, the real history is not like this. It is true that the Beetle originated from Nazi Germany and was personally supervised by Hitler, but the original design prototype of the Beetle did not come from ferdinand porsche. In the long history, we have neglected two Jewish automobile engineers from Hungary, Béla Barényi and Josef Ganz.
Bella Barney, 1907, was born near Vienna, Austria during the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1 March, and died in Berlin, Germany, 1997. Most people may not be familiar with it. He is a prolific inventor with twice as many patents as Edison. He invented many anti-collision devices and is known as the father of passive safety in automobile design. From 65438 to 0994, Barney was elected to the Detroit Automobile Hall of Fame for his continuous contribution to the automobile industry. Five years later, he was nominated for the World Automotive Engineer Award again, although he had been dead for two years.
1925, Barney, who was only 18 years old, designed a car chassis while studying mechanical and electrical engineering at Vienna Institute. Its design drawings clearly show the characteristics of rear wheel drive, engine and air cooling. All elements of the Beetle designed by Porsche in 1938 are similar to Barney's design. In addition, the body design of the Beetle when it was put into production was also very similar to Barney's design.
For a long time, both Volkswagen and Porsche played down Barney's contribution to "people and cars". Until 1955, the public finally recognized Barney as the "father of knowledge" of the Volkswagen Beetle, because Barney successfully sued the public for copyright infringement in 1955. Despite this, Volkswagen has earned a lot of money at this time.
Besides Bella Barney, Joseph Ganz also had a profound influence on the design of Volkswagen Beetle. Although this has been a controversial topic for a long time, Ganz received a pension from Volkswagen in recognition of his great contribution to The Beatles.
Recently, the writer Paul Perroud published a book about Joseph Ganz, entitled "The Extraordinary Life of Joseph Ganz-the Jewish Engineer Behind Hitler's Volkswagen", which revealed the 120H model designed by Ganz as a consultant for Mercedes-Benz, which has many similarities with the later Volkswagen Beetle. The concept of "people and cars" was first put forward by Ganz in 1934. In May of the same year, Ganz made a revolutionary small car called May Bug. Seven years later, Hitler not only accepted the concept of Ganz family car, but also the car commissioned by Hitler was finally nicknamed the same, because in many English-speaking countries, the Volkswagen Beetle was also called a bug.
However, Ganz, who was born in 1, 65438, in July 1998, was hunted by the Nazis from the age of 35, and finally died silently in Australia in 1967. He spent most of his life on the run. He fled to Switzerland first, where he realized his dream of "people's car". 195 1 year, he fled to Australia, where he worked for Horton General Motors for several years, but faded out because of a heart attack.