This Direct and Oldest Ancestor of the Volkswagen Beetle Has a Sad History

It was 1931--an unknown yet brilliant Jewish engineer name Josef Ganz created the second prototype named Adler and nicknamed it 'Maikäfer'--or 'May-Beetle'--a common, brown European beetle that flies at dusk and often crashes into lighted windows.

This prototype got the interest of car company Standard Superior, who created a small vehicle according to Ganz' design.

That same company revealed one of Ganz's automotive prototype at a Berlin Auto Show in November 1933. They presented it as "volkswagen" or "people's car."

That time, a relatively new chancellor by the name of Adolf Hitler got interested in the prototype's design and its low price of 1,590 Reichsmark. Hitler had always wanted a simple, mass-produced, cheap car that will drive on Germany's new road networks.

Five years later, this same "people’s car" was introduced by Adolf Hitler to the German people as the Volkswagen Type 1. The lead engineer he assigned for the project was Ferdinand Porsche who created this prototype that  would eventually become the popular Volkswagen Beetle.

So what happened to the Jewish engineer who started it all? He was erased from German history. Josef Ganz died in obscurity in Melbourne, Australia.

Volkswagen Beetle's Direct Ancestor

It's easy to connect the dots here: the Standard Superior car introduced in 1933 is the Volkswagen Beetle's direct ancestor. Both vehicles actually share the same chassis, and both use the same principles when it comes to their foundations.

History books credit it to Ferdinand Porsche and his team, but the irony of it all is that it was actually designed and created by a Jewish engineer. This, apart from many other reasons, were what prompted the Germans to literally erase Josef Ganz's name in history.

It's a tragic end for someone who, even when he was a young student, had always thought of building a people's car for just the price of a motorcycle.

Rebuilding Josef Ganz's Original Standard Superior

There were only around 250 Standard Superior Type 1 models that were built in history. Only one of these has survived, and is currently owned by Lorenz Schmid, a Swiss-born relative of Josef Ganz and Dutch journalist & writer Paul Schilperoord.

To commemorate Ganz's work, they decided to restore the 1933 VW Beetle forerunner in all its glory.

Here was the original Standard Superior when they first bought it. It underwent many modifications along the way, which lost its original appearance:

It took almost a century to give credit to the original founder of the "people's car." Still, the final result is a marvel to look at. Here's what it looks like after the restoration:

https://youtu.be/v6I3BzJuiuA