Historical Volkswagen Pictures

 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…