Watching a Amazon Prime documentary, "Ganz: How I Lost My Beetle". Apparently the VW was originally designed by Josef Ganz and not Ferdinand Porsche. Ganz was a Jewish engineer. This is an incredible story about the man's life and accomplishments erased from history. Still shocked...
Pretty interesting; here is a link to the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6iTS7I2vfY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF4uzks1jr0
Lynn, thx for the post. Unfortunately I am not on A prime to see this, would be most interesting.
There is more to the story though, as the headline/title might be a little misleading. There is no doubt about Ganzs work and that it has not been aknowledged for a long time. it is clear to see why that happened under the German regime.
His name has been in the enthusiast books for decades though. and everyone remotely interested in the history of the beetle would be encouraged to read those more modern versions of history. It has to be said, that Ganz designed one of several Volkswagen type cars.
meaning a affordable 'peoples car', not the 'VW AG' brand name. From my perspective ( of only reading and hear say), there were many people involved. the beetle as we know it was definitely the work of Dr Ferdinand Porsche and his crew in Stuttgart. there is a fantastic book publication, that shows many of Porsches oiginal drawings from 1934 to 1938. Thats not to deny that he borrowed ideas from many others, including his more than 30 yrs experience in Automotive development at the time. I believe he won a race as early as 1905 with a 4wd fully electric vehicle, went on to Steyr Daimler, had brief work mith Mercedes and designed the Auto Union race cars of the 1930s.... So I just want to add that it would be unfair to insult Porsches achievements. It is good to hear the whole story though and Josef Ganz story definitely needs to be told. Since he was another automotive pioneer genius that deserves to be remembered.
Lynn, thx again for the info. I found the full 80 mins documentary on youtube ( although part in Dutch language I was able to understand most of it. It was especially nice to listen to all the Swiss German dialect talking).
very controversial life of Mr Ganz. I have to say it is a great and well made documentary with very good information and tremendous old original footage and pics!