Earlier this year VeloceToday presented four articles on the pioneering Tatra, with insights from two owners and Karl Ludvigsen, who also owned a T87 in the 1960s. The articles prompted a lot of responses, including learned help from Tatra expert Ian Tisdale. At the same time, Cindy Meitle sent us a copy of a new book about Josef Ganz, another pioneer who advanced the concept of an aerodynamic rear-engined people’s car with his “Maybug”, a lightweight car much like the prototype Tatra V570, which in turn was much like the Porsche-designed Volkswagen. Typically, Ludvigsen was on this story long before the book was published, noting in detail Ganz’s role in an article, “Origins of the People’s Car” in Automobile Quarterly, V45 No, 2, in 2005.
Ganz was involved with Tatra for years, so we asked Tisdale to write a review on this new, well documented book about Ganz, who claimed to have ‘invented’ the Volkwagen. Tisdale is well qualified to sort this all out, as he does superbly in the review below. [Ed.]
Josef Ganz, The Jewish Engineer Behind Hitler’s Volkswagen, Paul Schilperoord, RVP Publishers, 2011 ISBN 978-1-61412-201-2 (hardback). Available from Amazon.com. About $18 for softback edition.
By Ian Tisdale
So, what’s behind this cover, with its portentous title separating an image of Josef Ganz, unfamiliar, but appealing and dapper, and the well-known shot of Ferdinand Porsche demonstrating a model of the KdF-Wagen to Hitler and his swastika’d cronies? First and foremost, a very well-paced and well-written story that quickly becomes hard to put down; the general reader will find this as entertaining as a good novel, and car enthusiasts of a variety of persuasions will want to find out what new insights are being revealed. Some Volkswagen and Porsche followers will approach this new book keen to review fresh information on their area of interest, while others, possibly the majority, will be primed to defend the established narrative. Meanwhile, the stature of the Beetle is such that other factions already attempt to lay claim to at least some of the VW provenance, and they will want to see to what extent the Ganz exposure supports or erodes their case.
[Read more…] about Josef Ganz and the Volkswagen