Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, one of the most brilliant engineers in the automotive world is probably best known for the sports cars that bear his name. However, he also designed the best selling car in history, the Volkswagen Beetle. Porsche was commended to build the car by Adolf Hitler and his KDF propaganda agency, although he was not the only one to fight over Porsche's expertise. Joseph Stalin also wanted Porsche to build cars for his government and had Porsche visit the USSR in 1932. Stalin asked Porsche to become the director of Soviet auto industry development. According to Ferdinand Porsche's son Ferry, Ferdinand seriously considered Stalin's offer but declined it due to the language barrier between him and the Soviets. But what would have happened had things went differently and Porsche accepted the offer? The Beetle and Microbus would likely never have become the Western icons they were due to Cold War tensions, but could something else replace them?
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WI: Soviet Volkswagen
- Thread starter Oppo
- Start date
- Location
- Municipal Commune of Bourne
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I was about to smash through the wall screaming '#LadaLife' but I see you mean Literally Volkswagen.
Creekmench
A shade of indigo
- Pronouns
- He/him
If he is inside the USSR then his work on German tanks is butterflied out, but I wouldn't bet on him surviving the Great Purge.
Creekmench
A shade of indigo
- Pronouns
- He/him
As an aside, I could see Porsche surviving the same way Andrei Tupolev and Sergei Korolev did in a "nice" Siberian Gulag making things for the Soviet war machine.
One weird reverse of this is that Chrysler, according to Jason Vuic's book on the latter, wanted to buy the Yugo brand from Bricklin. He refused even though it would have netted him a massive return on his investment.
If the deal had gone through, it probably would have lost Chrysler a lot of money even before Yugoslavia broke up, and the only non-Yugoslav built car in that brand may have been a rebadged small and/or stripped Chrysler or Mitsubishi, but it's still interesting to think about.
If the deal had gone through, it probably would have lost Chrysler a lot of money even before Yugoslavia broke up, and the only non-Yugoslav built car in that brand may have been a rebadged small and/or stripped Chrysler or Mitsubishi, but it's still interesting to think about.
Cook
an obscure historical reference.
- Location
- There, or here... but mostly there.
There is also the option of a post-war reverse engineered Soviet Beetle, as per other spoils of war, the most notable being the TU-4, which was a B-29 copy complete with patches where the original B-29 had been repaired.
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