ColdFusion - How BIG is Volkswagen? (They own Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche..)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are watching Cold Fusion TV. Hi, welcome to another Cold Fusion video. Volkswagen. Pretty much everyone on the planet knows that name. But the thing is, this company is a bit of a dark horse. They actually own a lot of car brands which you've heard of. In fact, every fourth car sold in Europe is from the Volkswagen Group. Volkswagen has been a popular suggestion for a video, so let's do it.

Starting point is 00:00:33 In this video, we'll talk about the intriguing origins, size, and some interesting facts about VW. Volkswagen, translated from German to English, means the people's car. And that's exactly what the company was created for back in 1937, to make a car for the people of Germany. In order to understand and really appreciate the history of VW, we must look at where it all started, with a man named Ferdinand and a car called the Beetle.

Starting point is 00:01:02 The Beatle was the brainchild of Ferdinand Porsche, who was the son of a master panel beater. Porsche was born in 1875 in northern Bohemia, all modern day Czech Republic. From a young age, he was a nonconformist and a free thinker, but possessed a brilliant mind for design. In 1900, as a teenager, he designed the world's first front-wheel drive car, the Loner Electric Chavez. His unorthodox front-wheel drive concept won him many design awards and even got accepted

Starting point is 00:01:29 into the higher echelons of society. Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand owned one of Porsche's early cars. Over the next decade, the acclaimed designer would leave his mark in automotive racing, civilian cars, and even aircraft engines, which he designed for Austria during World War I. It doesn't stop there, though. During this time, he even created the first gasoline electric hybrid car. While this would be a lifetime's work for most, his real passion lay in the vehicle for the common man. You see, at the time, in the early 1900s, cars in Europe were seen as a toy for the very rich, but Ferdinand had seen what Henry Ford had done in. America with the Ford Model T and he thought he could do the same for Europe. With this idea, he tried to convince a number of European companies to take on his idea of

Starting point is 00:02:15 a small rear-engined affordable car, but he was let down each and every time. From this, he decided to just start his own company. Now he was free to do as he pleased. Ferdinand noted that the cars of the day were too tall and not aerodynamic enough. He wanted to build a car that was slick yet affordable. While trying to get fined, to get financial backing for this new project, Porsche was once again let down numerous times. This was until 1933. It was in this year that a friend in the industry brought him into contact with a man named Adolf Hitler. He was the freshly elected Chancellor of Germany and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, otherwise known as the Nazi Party. For some context,

Starting point is 00:02:59 in the early 1930s, Hitler was seen as a man who could lift Germany out of a terrible economic situation and restore strength to a demoralized population. Of course, as history tells us, he turned out to be something quite different in the end. At this time, Hitler was looking to show how advanced Nazism was to the world. One way of showing this superiority was through engineering. Hitler proposed that any German company that could build a race car for the upcoming Grand Prix season would win 250,000 Reichmarks. Ferdinand Porsche's engineering designs dominated the 1934 racing season,

Starting point is 00:03:33 and because of this, he was contracted to make three prototype cars by the German government. In part, these new cars were to be designed for sustained high speeds on the newly revived Autobahn project. The outcome of this contract would be the Volkswagen Beetle. Strangely, the Beatle was originally going to be called the Strength Through Joy car. Strength Through Joy, that's a bit of a strange name you might be thinking. Well, Strength Through Joy was the title of the leisure branch within the Nazi party. This branch was in charge of making the middle-class leisure activities affordable and available to the masses after the brutal economic slump of the 1920s. These state-sponsored activities included concerts, plays, libraries, day trips and holidays.

Starting point is 00:04:23 They also built large cruise ships and wanted to encourage tourism to Germany. The People's Car was just a small part of this vision. The Beatle wasn't to be built for speed or beauty, with a top speed not far above 100 kilometres an hour, and a market price of $390 US dollars, it was built to do just one thing, move people reliably and economically. The car was to be built by a new firm created by the German Labor Front in 1937, Volkswagen. If you want to see something interesting, take a look at this photo from 1938. This is Adolf Hitler laying the cornerstone for the original VW factory. The unassuming sullen character to the far right is Ferdinand Porte. It's moments like this in history that

Starting point is 00:05:10 could be called simultaneously fascinating and frightening. The strength through joy prototype car was on track for 300,000 orders, but at that moment, the world was about to be shocked by the biggest conflict in world history up to that day. In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II broke out. At this stage, only a handful of cars were complete and none were delivered to customers. Germany went into full crisis mode and diverted all attention towards the war effort. The Volkswagen factory began manufacturing military vehicles including an amphibious version of the Beetle prototype and the infamous V1 flying bomb. This manufacturing of military equipment made the factory a major bombing target. In 1945 when the war ended and

Starting point is 00:05:58 peace enveloped the world like most of Europe the VW factory lay in ruins. In an extremely strange twist of fate an undettonated bomb was found lodged between the factory's main power generators. If it had exploded that would have marked the end of Volkswagen. Meanwhile, Ferdinand Porsche was imprisoned in France for working for Hitler. At 72 years old, it was looking like Porsche's dream of the small car for the masses may not come to reality, but he didn't give up. Upon his release from prison, he spent countless hours on the manufacturing floor listening to what workers had to say and absorbing their ideas. At this time, the situation in Germany was dire, and some citizens were even on the brink of starvation. There needed

Starting point is 00:06:40 to be a revival of jobs for the middle class. Enter Major Ivan Hurst of the British Army. He took control of the bombed VW factory and restarted production. Now, finally, the first Beatles began to roll off the production line. These first Beatles were made for the German postal service. Interestingly, around this same time, the Ford Company was given the opportunity to have VW free of charge, but they declined because they thought the company was worthless. By 1940, Ferdinand was no longer directly involved in the Beetle but went on to work on another project. The Porsche 356. It was the car that began the Porsche Legacy.

Starting point is 00:07:20 In 1950, Ferdinand took one last tour of the factory and was happy to finally see his vision being realized. He would die one year later at the age of 75. The early success of the Beetle was limited only to Europe. In America, the car was a hard sell. Large, powerful cars were the state of what 1950s. what 1950s America stood for. The bigness of our fast-moving modern America. Come on kids, let's load up.

Starting point is 00:08:29 Everybody. Inside you'll find this lady's beauty vanity. This luxury is standard equipment on all the larks. How would you convince the Americans to buy such a small, underpowered Trundlemobile? Clever, honest advertising would prove to be a charm, but the initial gateway was made through a deal where U.S. car retailers had to buy three Beatles for every Jaguar. car which was very much in demand at the time. As it turns out, after the Americans got a taste for the beetle, they actually ended up loving it, and the Jaguar became a side show. As the river of

Starting point is 00:09:02 production increased, the beetle began gaining worldwide recognition for its reliability due to a high standard of engineering and quality control. What is it? It's a 200-year-old Volkswagen. They really built these things, didn't they? By 1955, Volkswagen had produced 1 million Beatles. The late 1950s and early 60s saw the peak of the Beatles' popularity, with some customers having to wait 12 to 18 months to receive their order. It was even becoming an icon of the countercultural revolution happening in 1960s America. The success of the Beetle allowed VW to acquire Audi in 1965. Always looking bright for Volkswagen at this time,

Starting point is 00:09:50 but the beetle fever wouldn't last forever and sales began to decline in 1973. As a reaction to this, VW came out with an old new generation of cars. Out of this decision came the Pissart, Golf and Polo. In the 1980s, they would acquire a 75% stake in the Spanish car manufacturer, Siot. In 1998, VW would add Bentley, Lamborghini, and Bugatti to its portfolio. Two years later, they would also take Skoda on board. 2010 saw VW acquire the Italian Automotive Tax. Italian Automotive Design House, Ital Design, Cugario.

Starting point is 00:10:27 This was a pretty big deal as Ital Design is credited with the aesthetic creations of a wide variety of cars for various companies including Alpha Romeo, Aston Martin, BMW, Chevrolet, Fiat, Ford, Ferrari, Hyundai, Lexus, Lotus, Mitsubishi and several others. Their designs always stood out as classically futuristic. The most famous of them is the Delorean DMC12. in 1981. It was of course the car used in the Back to the Future series. In 2012, VW's subsidiary Audi would purchase Italian motorbike maker, Ducati, further increasing VW's stature in the automotive industry. Today, VW has turned into one of the largest and most valuable companies. It has ranked

Starting point is 00:11:20 seventh in the 2016 Fortune Global 500 list. It has a market cap of $63.8 billion as of November 2016 and has maintained the largest market share in Europe's automotive market for the last two years. VW is responsible for producing 13% of all passenger cars globally. In 2015, it produced 9.93 million motor vehicles. This translates roughly to 19 cars every minute. This is the second largest number of any manufacturer on the planet behind Toyota. In addition to the other car brands mentioned earlier, VW also owns man trucks and Porsche. In total, they have approximately 340 subsidiaries. The company has over 610,000 employees. For perspective, Ford and General Motors have a combined workforce of 448,000, and VW's biggest competitor, Toyota,

Starting point is 00:12:16 has about 346,000, nearly half the amount that Volkswagen has. Volkswagen's employee force is a figure larger than the armed forces of Australia, Italy, Croatia and Norway combined. The company has 121 production facilities in 20 European countries and a further 11 in the America's Asia and Africa. VW operates in a total of 150 countries. They do more than just manufacture cars though. Volkswagen Financial Services operates in 51 countries and specialise in loans, investment, insurance for both private and business enterprises. Okay, so we're nearing the end of the video, but first let's take a look at a few fun facts about Volkswagen. Number 6.

Starting point is 00:13:00 The classic VW Beetool was built from 1938 to 2003. During this period, 21,529,464 beetles were built. It is the longest running production model of any car and VW claims that it is the best-selling car in history since it did not change substantially during its production run. Toyota has sold over 40 million corollas since 1966, but the corolla nameplate was applied to 11 generations, so it cannot be counted as the same model. Number 5. On the 18th of September 2015, VW was caught cheating on emission tests via a software code

Starting point is 00:13:39 that detected when emission tests were being conducted and altered emission controls for better results. Affected cars' emissions were 35 to 40 times illegal levels. This incident known as Dieselgate led to a drop in the market value of Volkswagen by $30 billion. It was a shameful period for the VW group, but the fallout from this incident has mostly passed. Number 4. Volkswagen named some of its cars after wind currents across the world. For example, the Polo is named after the northern polar wind. The Passart is named after a German trade wind. The Jeter is named after the jet

Starting point is 00:14:16 stream in subtropic to middle latitudes. Number three. Three Volkswagen cars were named in the list of the top 10 best-selling cars ever. The Volkswagen Passat, Golf and Beetle. Number two, an entire town was built to accommodate for the workers of the first VW cars. It would become Walsberg, the fifth largest city in the German state of Lower Saxony. The local football team is owned by VW and is ranked 30th, just behind Liverpool, in the way for league standings. The Wolfsburg VW plant is still the largest car factory under a single roof in the world. Number 1. In 1932, Stalin invited Ferdinand Porsche to the Soviet Union.

Starting point is 00:15:03 Stalin wanted to advance industrial development in the Soviet Union with the help of experts from capitalist countries. He offered Ferdinand the position of General Director of Development for the Soviet Auto Industry. According to Porsche's son, after much consideration, Porsche refused. The reason? Not the fact that it was the Soviet Union, but more so the language barrier. How could he manage such a colossal engineering task if he couldn't even communicate in the native tongue?

Starting point is 00:15:29 So in a quirk of history, if Porsche accepted, the beetle could have been a symbol of the Soviet Union. So with that, that brings us to the end of this video. But there's one question remaining. So without a doubt, Porsche was a genius engineer and designer, the one in a lifetime kind, but the shadow of the Nazi legacy still hangs over his work. So the question is, and historians still debate, was Ports. Porsche purely into the technical details of building a car for the masses, and like many people of the day, didn't comprehend the political climate, or was he actually fond of Hitler?

Starting point is 00:16:05 Some even say that he had no choice in the matter, and would have been put to death by Hitler if he had refused his offer. Regardless, everybody can currently appreciate the engineering prowess VW Group has under its belt today. Okay, so that's enough for me. Hope you enjoyed this video about the history, size and some fun. fun facts about the VW group. If you want to see more videos like this or other cool stuff, feel free to subscribe to this channel.

Starting point is 00:16:31 If you know someone that might be interested in this topic, or maybe even drives a VW, show them this video. This has been Degogo, you've been watching Cold Fusion. Thanks for watching and I'll see you again for the next video. Cheers! Have a good one. Cold Fusion, it's new thinking.

ColdFusion - How BIG is Volkswagen? (They own Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche..)

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