Historical Volkswagen Pictures

vintagevw — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:50:17 +0000

I was pretty amazed when I saw this small collection of original pictures from early Volkswagen prototypes. They were posted on http://forums.motortrend.com by a guy who’s grandfather was an engineer / test driver in the early days when Volkswagen wasn’t even a factory yet. The two top rows of pictures and the last one are pictures of the VW30 prototypes. They must have been taken somewhere in 1937. Notice the convertible. This was car number 22 out of 30 VW30 prototypes. It was painted dark blue and was already fitted with bumpers. In this picture the convertible is still carrying its temporary license plate number IIIA-0426. It later received its permanent license plate number IIIA-37022. The other 2 cars are VW38 models. At page 170 from Chris Barber’s book ‘Birth of the Beetle’ he says ‘The only known picture of Car 43024…‘ which corresponds to the picture on page 171. As we look closely at the first picture of the third row we can see that this is in fact another picture of car ’43024′. Isn’t that great or what? The other VW38 prototype is car ’43019′. This car still has its original bumpers. Car ’43024′ already has been updated with VW39 style bumpers. These are truely amazing historical Volkswagen pictures. You begin to wonder if these are the only pictures this guy’s grandfather has…

Showing Off His Split Beetle

vintagevw — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 21:16:14 +0000

This guy is definitely showing off his standard Split Beetle. Well, I can’t blame him if your driving such a nice Split. It looks like a post July 1949 Split but it still has the ‘football’ type mirror. I thought these changed somewhere mid ’49. I can’t determine if this beetle has the thin aluminum trim or the thick chrome trim around the lens of the tail lights. From mid 1949 through very early 1950, Beetles used the thin aluminum trim version. The thick chrome trim ones were used on pre mid 1949 Beetles. This car also has the non embossed deck lid, small VW logo hubcaps and new style bumpers instead of the ‘banana’ style bumpers. All visible features making this a post July 1949 Split Beetle. Of course it can be modernized which was very common back then.

Vintage VW » Time Travel

Historical Volkswagen Pictures

Showing Off His Split Beetle