How BIG is Volkswagen? (They own Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche..)

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you are watching TV hi welcome to another ColdFusion video Volkswagon pretty much everyone on the planet knows that name but the thing is this company is a bit of a dark horse they actually own a lot of car brands which you've heard of in fact every fourth car sold in Europe is from the Volkswagen Group Volkswagen has been a popular suggestion for a video so let's do it in this video we'll talk about the intriguing origins size and some interesting facts about VW Volkswagen translated from German to English means the people's car and that's exactly what the company was created for back in 1937 to make a car for the people of Germany in order to understand and really appreciate the history of VW we must look at where it all started with a man named Ferdinand and a car called the beetle the beetle was the brainchild of Ferdinand Porsche who was the son of a master panel beetle Porsche was born in 1875 in northern bohemia' or modern-day Czech Republic from a young age he was a nonconformist and a free thinker but possessed a brilliant mind for design in 1900 as a teenager he designed the world's first front-wheel drive car the loaner electric shivers his unorthodox front-wheel drive concept want him many design awards and even got accepted into the higher echelon of society Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand owned one of Porsches early cars over the next decade the acclaimed designer would leave his mark in automotive racing civilian cars and even aircraft engines which he designed for Austria during World War one it doesn't stop there though during this time he even created the first gasoline-electric hybrid car while this would be a lifetime's work for most his real passion lay in the vehicle for the common man you see at the time in the early 1900s cars in europe was seen as a toy for the very rich but Ferdinand had seen what Henry Ford had done in America with the Ford Model T and he thought he could do the same for Europe with this idea he tried to convince a number of European companies to take on his idea of a small rear-engined affordable car but he was let down each and every time from this he decided to just start his own company now he was free to do as he pleased Ferdinand noted that the cause of the day were too tall and not aerodynamic enough he wanted to build a car that was slick yet affordable while trying to get financial backing for this new project Porsche was once again let down numerous times this was until 1933 it was in this year that a friend in the industry brought him into contact with a man named Adolf Hitler he was the freshly elected Chancellor of Germany and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party otherwise known as the Nazi Party for some context in the early 1930s hila was seen as a man who could lift Germany out of a terrible economic situation and restore strength to a demoralized population of course as history tells us he turned out to be something quite different in the end at this time Hitler was looking to show how advanced Nazism was to the world one way of showing this superiority was through engineering Hitler proposed that any German company that could build a racecar for the upcoming Grand Prix season would win 250,000 remarks Ferdinand Porsches engineering designs dominated the 1934 racing season and because of this he was contracted to make 3 prototype cars by the German government in part these new cars were to be designed for sustained high speeds on the newly revived Autobahn project the outcome of this contract would be the Volkswagen Beetle [Music] strangely the beetle was originally going to be called the strength through joy car strength through joy that's a bit of a strange name you might be thinking well strength through joy was the title of the leisure branch within the Nazi Party this branch was in charge of making the middle class leisure activities affordable and available to the masses after the brutal economic slump of the 1920s these state-sponsored activities included concerts plays libraries day trips and holidays they also built large cruise ships and wanted to encourage tourism to Germany the people's car was just a small part of this vision the beetle wasn't to be built for speed or beauty with a top speed not far above 100 kilometers an hour and a market price of 390 US dollars it was built to do just one thing move people reliably and economically the car was to be built by a new firm created by the German labor front in 1937 Volkswagen if you want to see something interesting take a look at this photo from 1938 this is a Dolf Hitler laying the cornerstone for the original VW Factory the unassuming sullen character to the far right is Ferdinand Porsche it's moments like this in history that could be called simultaneously fascinating and frightening the strength through joy prototype car was on track for 300,000 orders but at that moment the world was about to be shocked by the biggest conflict in world history up to that day in 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and World War to break out at this stage only a handful of cars were complete and none were delivered to customers Germany went into full crisis mode and diverted all attention towards the war effort the Volkswagen factory began manufacturing military vehicles including an amphibious version of the beetle prototype and the infamous v1 flying bomb this manufacturing of military equipment made the factory a major bombing target in 1945 when the war ended and peace enveloped the world like most of Europe the VW factory lay in ruined in an extremely strange twist of fate an undesignated bomb was found lodged between the factories main power generators if it had exploded that would have marked the end of Volkswagen meanwhile ferdinand porsche was imprisoned in france for working for hitler at 72 years old it was looking like Porsches dream of the small car for the masses may not come to reality but he didn't give up upon his release from prison he spent countless hours on the manufacturing floor listening to what workers had to say and absorbing their ideas at this time the situation in Germany was dire and some citizens were even on the brink of starvation there needed to be a revival of jobs for the middle class enter major Ivan Hirst of the British Army he took control of the bombed VW Factory and restarted production now finally the first Beatles began to roll off the production line these first Beatles were made for the German postal service interestingly around this same time the Ford company was given the opportunity to have VW free of charge but they declined because they thought the company was worthless by 1948 Ferdinand was no longer directly involved in the beetle but went on to work on another project the Porsche 356 it was the car that began the Porsche legacy [Music] [Music] [Music] in 1950 Ferdinand took one last tour of the factory and was happy to finally see his vision being realized he would die one year later at the age of 75 the early success of the beetle was limited only to Europe in America the car was a hard sell large powerful cars were the state of what 1950s America stood for [Music] inside you'll find this ladies beauty vanity this luxury is standard equipment on all the large how would you convince the Americans to buy such a small underpowered trundle mobile clever honest advertising would prove to be a charm but the initial gateway was made through a deal where US car retailers had to buy three beetles for every Jaguar a car which was very much in demand at the time as it turns out after the Americans got a taste for the beetle they actually ended up loving it and the Jaguar became a sideshow as the river of production increased the beetle began gaining worldwide recognition for its reliability due to a higher standard of engineering and quality control what is it it's a 200 year old Volkswagen they really built these things in the-- by 1955 volkswagen had produced 1 million beetles the late 1950s and early 60s saw the peak of the beetles popularity with some customers having to wait 12 to 18 months to receive their order it was even becoming an icon of the counter cultural revolution happening in 1960s America the success of the beetle allowed VW to acquire Aldi in 1965 always looking bright for Volkswagen at this time but the beetle fever wouldn't last forever and sales began to decline in 1973 as a reaction to this VW came out with an all new generation of cars out of this decision came the Passat Golf & polo in the 1980s they would acquire a 75% stake in a Spanish car manufacturer Fiat in 1998 VW would add Bentley Lamborghini and Bugatti to its portfolio two years later they would also take Skoda onboard 2010 saw VW acquired the Italian automotive design house it owl design Eukarya this was a pretty big deal as a tell design is credited with the aesthetic creations of a wide variety of cars for various companies including Alfa Romeo Aston Munn BMW Chevrolet Fiat Ford Ferrari he and a Lexus Lotus Mitsubishi and several others their designs always stood out as classically futuristic the most famous of them is the DeLorean dmc-12 in 1981 he was of course the car used in the Back to the Future series in 2012 VW subsidiary Aldi would purchase Italian motorbike maker Ducati further increasing VW stature in the automotive industry today VW has turned into one of the largest and most valuable companies it is ranked seventh in the 2016 fortune global 500 list it has a market cap of 60 3.8 billion dollars as of November 2016 and has maintained the largest market share in Europe sought emotive market for the last two years VW is responsible for producing 13% of all passenger cars globally in 2015 it produced nine point nine three million motor vehicles this translates roughly to 19 cars every minute this is the second largest number of any manufacturer on the planet behind Toyota in addition to the other car brands mentioned earlier VW also owns man Trucks and Porsche in total they have approximately 340 subsidiaries the company has over six hundred and ten thousand employees for perspective Ford and General Motors have combined workforce of 448 thousand and VW s biggest competitor Toyota has about three hundred and forty six thousand nearly half the amount that Volkswagen has Volkswagens employee force is a figure larger than the Armed Forces of Australia Italy Croatia and Norway combined the company has a hundred and twenty-one production facilities in 20 European countries and a further 11 in the Americas Asia and Africa VW operates in a total of 150 countries they do more than just manufacture cars though Volkswagen Financial Services operates in 51 countries and specialize in loans investment insurance for both private and business enterprises okay so we're nearing the end of the video but first let's take a look at a few fun facts about Volkswagen number six the classic VW Beetle was built from 1938 to 2003 during this period 21 million five hundred and twenty-nine thousand four hundred and sixty four beetles were built it is the longest-running production model of any car and VW claims that it is the best-selling car in history since it did not change substantially during its production run Toyota has sold over 40 million crawlers since 1966 but the Corolla nameplate was applied to 11 generations so it cannot be counted as the same model number 5 on the 18th of September 2015 VW was caught cheating on a mission tests via a software code that detected when emission tests were being conducted and altered emission controls for better results affected cars emissions were 35 to 40 times for legal levels this incident known as diesel gain led to a drop in the market value of Volkswagen by 30 billion dollars it was a shameful period for the VW Group but the fallout from this incident has mostly passed number 4 Volkswagen named some of its cars after wind currents across the world for example the Polo is named after the northern polar wind the Passat is named after a German trade wind the Jetta is named after the jet stream in subtropic to middle latitudes number three the re Volkswagen cars were named in the list of the top ten best-selling cars ever the volkswagen passat golf and beetle number two an entire town was built to accommodate for the workers of the first VW cars it would become Wolfsburg the fifth largest city in the German state of Lower Saxony the local football team is owned by VW and is ranked 30th just behind Liverpool in the wafer League standings the Wolfsburg VW plant is still the largest car factory under a single roof in the world number one in 1932 stalin invited ferdinand porsche to the soviet union stalin wanted to advance industrial development in the soviet union with the help of experts from capitalist country he offered Ferdinand the position of general director of development for the Soviet auto industry according to Porsches son after much consideration Porsche refused the reason not the fact that it was the Soviet Union but more say the language barrier how could he manage such a colossal engineering task if he couldn't even communicate in the native tongue so in a quirk of history if Porsche accepted the beetle could have been a symbol of the Soviet Union so with that that brings us to the end of this video but there's one question remaining so without a doubt Porsche was a genius engineer and designer the one-in-a-lifetime kind but the shadow of the night sea legacy still hangs over his work so the question is and historians still debate was Porsche purely into the technical details of building a car for the masses and like many people of the day didn't comprehend the political climate or was the actually fond of Hitler some even say that he had no choice in the matter and would have been put to death by Hitler if he had refused his offer regardless everybody can currently appreciate the engineering prowess VW Group has under its belt today okay so that's enough for me hope you enjoyed this video about the history size and some fun facts about the VW Group if you want to see more videos like this or other cool stuff feel free to subscribe to this channel if you know someone that might be interested in this topic or maybe even drives a VW show them this video this has been to gogo you've been watching cold fusion thanks for watching and I'll see you again for the next video Cheers have a good one cold fusion you thinking [Music] [Music] [Music]

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Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 3,612,465

Rating: 4.873003 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: DNnV3Jb3pkA

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Length: 17min 19sec (1039 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 22 2016

Reddit Comments

[removed]

👍︎︎ 14 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Dec 23 2016 🗫︎ replies

Skoda, Audi , MAN trucks, seat,

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/Phuckedorf 📅︎︎ Dec 23 2016 🗫︎ replies

The "People's Car"

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/i_amtheice 📅︎︎ Dec 23 2016 🗫︎ replies

I like ColdFusion content, but he really needs to work on his pronunciations. "Porsh", "Vulkswahgin", "Ryshmark", and so on. It's not just this video with the German words either; he has a lot of mispronunciations for other words too.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/Tooch10 📅︎︎ Dec 24 2016 🗫︎ replies

Do they own Audi too?

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/Bigwhistle 📅︎︎ Dec 23 2016 🗫︎ replies