http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050524/...n_milestone_dc

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The 100 millionth Volkswagen rolled off a German assembly line on Tuesday, taking the brand into an elite of four car companies whose output has stretched into nine digits, Europe's biggest carmaker said. The Touran compact van with a silver metallic paint job that set the milestone at VW's headquarters in Wolfsburg is only distantly related to the humble Volkswagen Beetle that became a global icon of affordable mobility after World War II.
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Volkswagen -- the name means "people's car" in German -- made just 1,800 Beetles in 1945, but eventually produced 21.5 million of the bug-shaped, bug-eyed vehicles.

Output of the VW Golf, which became the company's subsequent workhorse, overtook the Beetle in 2002 and has hit 23 million. VW has also made 13 million Passats and 9 million Polos.

Volkswagen makes cars and commercial vehicles in 14 plants around the world. It delivered just over 3 million vehicles to customers in more than 150 countries last year.

Until now, only the Ford, Toyota and Chevrolet brands had made more than 100 million vehicles, a company spokesman said.

Including other brands made by the group, VW passed the 100 million mark in September 1999. Production of all its units -- VW, Skoda, Bentley, Bugatti, Audi, Seat, Lamborghini and commercial vehicles -- surpassed 125 million last year.

 

The original idea for this car dates to Adolf Hitler's 1936 vision for a cheap, reliable " People's Car " ( as you note ) to help put depression-ridden Germany on wheels...also a reason why the first Autobahns were first proposed and constructed. Since Hitler, of course, by that time, did not have to ASK any German to do anything, he ordered Dr. Ferdinand Porsche to come up with a design, and the rest is history. It has been debated by automotive historians, though, just how much of the design and development work Dr. Porsche and his team actually did themselves and how much they contracted out.
The low Beetle production figures in 1945 can be explained from three sources. First, most of VW manufacturing during the war was of course for the German military....primarily the transport vehicle which later became known as the '"The Thing ". Second, many German plants and factories were damaged by bombing. Third, much of Germany's World War II labor supply was from slaves and enemy POW's and, this of course, was put to a stop when the allies reached the factories.