The Volkswagen brand is without doubt one of the most memorable automotive logos round. Everybody is aware of what it seems to be like. And at first look, it might appear the one adjustments in current a long time have been to make the Volkswagen brand flat and to slim the traces for a time.
It is a easy and distinctive model identification. Absolutely there’s nothing to argue about? So I believed, however it appears a livid debate is raging. Some persons are adamant that sooner or later the Volkswagen brand modified in a method not seen on official design paperwork.
Did the Volkswagen brand change?
The Volkswagen brand with a niche (Picture credit score: Julian Hochgesang through Unsplash)
The Volkswagen brand contains the V and the W from the model identify in a circle. The talk is about whether or not there’s – or was – a niche between the 2 letters.
The design used at present reveals the V and W clearly separated by an area. However some persons are satisfied {that a} earlier design used one single form, with the V and the W joined within the center.
“I believed it was only a massive, bizarre W as a result of it was related, I used to be no less than 19 once I went ‘Oh duh, V-W! I get it!’,” one individual writes on Reddit.
Some are dismissing the suggestion as a basic instance of the visible Mandela impact, a phenomenon by which folks keep in mind seeing a picture in a method that by no means existed.
The Mandela impact may be very actual. Well-known examples embody broadly held false reminiscences of the Monopoly man carrying a monocle and the Fruits of the Loom brand that includes a cornucopia. There have additionally been claims of a Ford brand Mandela impact.
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However these on the aspect of the conjoined no-gap VW brand do not imagine that they are imagining it. Some have delved into some deep web archaeology, combing the online for proof that the brand used to look the way in which they keep in mind it.
Volkswagen logos with no hole (Picture credit score: Alexis AMZ DA CRUZ / Leonhard Niederwimmer through Unsplash)
The reply? Even a fast search on a inventory photograph library means that the VW brand has certainly typically appeared with out a hole on some autos in some nations at numerous instances by the model’s historical past.
Some folks have even tracked down appearances by Volkswagens in motion pictures to show that the conjoined brand design existed.
Residue: No house within the Volkswagen brand in Knocked Up (2007) from r/Retconned
It seems that this was by no means an official or intentional design choice, although. Even classic Volkswagen brand design specs present an area between the 2 letters.
Among the no-gap logos could have been made by third events. It could even be that manufacturing crops in some nations determined it was simpler to make the badge out of a single piece of chrome. And maybe at sure instances there was much less insistence on sticking to the type information than there’s at present.
Implementation of the hole has various over time too. On some automobiles it was barely a hairline between the 2 letters, making it invisible at a distance. In different purposes, the letters are extra clearly separate.
Who designed the Volkswagen brand?
However wait, there’s extra proof for the related VW brand – and much more controversy!
Volkswagen says its brand was designed by an engineer referred to as Franz Reimspiess, who additionally labored on the engine for the Beetle. He is stated to have gained a contest to design the identification and to have gained 50 Marks for his efforts.
However an Austrian designer referred to as Nikolai Borg claims that he designed the brand in June 1939, directed by the Nazi engineer Fritz Todt. His model of the brand had no hole between the V and the W, which has led to claims that Volkswagen added the hole to keep away from paying Borg.
Nevertheless, in 2005, the Vienna Enterprise Courtroom rejected Borg’s copyright declare, ruling that the VW brand had already been trademarked a yr earlier than his design. That seems to substantiate that the unique brand design was the one with a niche.
What was the unique Volkswagen brand?
The unique Volkswagen brand used from 1938 to 1939 featured what seems to be like a cross between a propeller and a swastika (Picture credit score: Volkswagen)
Essentially the most stunning a part of the Volkswagen brand historical past is the unique design. Right this moment the phrase ‘Nazimobile’ is related to a sure low-poly electrical choose up (take a look at the viral anti-Tesla posters), however the OG was the common-or-garden Beetle.
The unique Volkswagen brand was surrounded by a cogwheel and an elaborate design that seems to mix a propeller and a swastika, a sign of the corporate’s early connections the Third Reich.
Hitler himself commissioned the manufacture of the primary VW and offered state subsidies to help manufacturing. The goal was to create an inexpensive ‘folks’s automotive’, which is what the phrase Volkswagen means.
The Volkswagen brand historical past… with no gaps (Picture credit score: Marta Fernadez Montes through Wikimedia Commons)
The outbreak of the Second World Warfare precipitated the folks’s automotive challenge to fail. The Swastika was dropped from the brand, and Volkswagen was repurposed to supply navy autos. When the corporate was revitalised after the conflict by British Military officer Ivan Hirst, the brand was streamlined to a easy VW in a circle, much like the design we all know at present.
Wish to uncover extra brand histories? See our Tesla brand historical past and our choose of the very best logos of all time.
