20. The World’s Biggest Car Manufacturer and its Nazi Origins
In 2016, The Volkswagen Group took the lead from Toyota Motor Company as the world’s biggest car manufacturer. It produced more than 6 million automobiles and employed 626,000 people worldwide. In the fiscal year 2020, even with a global pandemic raging, the company delivered 9.3 million cars to customers worldwide – a dip from the 11 million cars delivered in 2019, before the pandemic hit. Sales in 2019 amounted to about U$ 307 billion, with about U$17 billion in after-tax earnings.
The company, whose iconic and cute VW Beetle became the star of Disney’s Herbie the Love Bug movie franchise, came a long way from its origins. The VW Beetle owes its creation to two men: engineer Ferdinand Porsche, and one of history’s most evil figures: Adolf Hitler. In the 1930s, Germany’s automobile industry was geared towards luxury cars that most Germans could not afford. There was no domestic equivalent of the mass-produced and low-priced Ford Model-T, so average Germans made do with motorcycles for personal transport, or did without. Most did without, and only 2 percent of Germans owned a car.
