Volkswagen Group History

Volkswagen AG, headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany, is Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer, and also one of the largest worldwide. The company began with the development of a low-priced car that was to be affordable for everyone. This car’s production has literally been driven in Germany since 1937, where the automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche was heavily involved in its development. The first VW was made based on his design plans for the 1938 Beetle, which, when including later versions up to the final year of production in 2003, The Volkswagenwerk Gmbh was founded in 1949 and was originally completely under national control. From 1960 onwards the company became increasingly privatised and eventually became the Volkswagenwerk AG. Four years later the acquisition of Auto Union Gmbh led to Audi becoming a part of the VW Group. After declining sales of the VW beetle and the general economic crisis, the company presented a new model in the compact class - the VW Golf, with an eye to having it build upon the success of the beetle. Skoda has belonged to Volkswagen AG since 1991 and in 1986 the Spanish manufacturer SEAT was taken over. MAN and Scania have also belonged to the Volkswagen brand commercial vehicles since 2011.