The Standard Superior was an

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded ...

, produced from 1933 to 1935 by '' Standard Fahrzeugfabrik'' of Ludwigsburg, Germany, founded by motorcycle maker Wilhelm Gutbrod and unrelated to the

Standard Motor Company The Standard Motor Company Limited was a motor vehicle manufacturer, founded in Coventry, England, in 1903 by Reginald Walter Maudslay. For many years, it manufactured Ferguson TE20 tractors powered by its Vanguard engine. All Standard's trac ...

of England. These small cars were designed according to the patents by Josef Ganz and featured rear-mounted

two-stroke engine A two-stroke (or two-stroke cycle) engine is a type of internal combustion engine that completes a power cycle with two strokes (up and down movements) of the piston during one power cycle, this power cycle being completed in one revolution of ...

s. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the same company made

Gutbrod Gutbrod was a German manufacturer of cars, motorcycles and small agricultural machinery. The firm was founded in Ludwigsburg, Germany by Wilhelm Gutbrod in 1926. It originally built "Standard" branded motorcycles. In 1933 the company relocat ...

cars and introduced the model Gutbrod Superior.

History

In the first half of 1932, Wilhelm Gutbrod, the President of the Standard Fahrzeugfabrik, came into contact with German engineer Josef Ganz. Ganz had been working on a small car design since the early 1920s and had so far built two prototypes, one for Ardie in 1930 and one for Adler in 1931, called the Maikäfer (

May Beetle ''Phyllophaga'' is a very large genus (more than 900 species) of New World scarab beetles in the subfamily Melolonthinae. Common names for this genus and many other related genera in the subfamily Melolonthinae are May beetles, June bugs, and ...

). After a demonstration with the Maikäfer by Ganz, Gutbrod was most interested to build a small car according to this design. The Standard Fahrzeugfabrik then purchased a license from Ganz to develop and build a small car according to his design. The prototype of this new model, which was to be called Standard Superior, was finished in 1932. It featured a tubular chassis, a rear mid-mounted engine, and independent wheel suspension with swing-axles at the rear.

Models

The first production model of the Standard Superior was introduced at the IAMA (Internationale Automobil- und Motorradausstellung) in Berlin in February 1933. It had a transverse 396cc, two-cylinder, two-stroke engine mounted in front of the rear axle. Because of some criticism to the body design, not in the least by Josef Ganz in Motor-Kritik, it was followed in April 1933 by a slightly altered model. In November 1933 the Standard Fahrzeugfabrik introduced yet another new and improved model for 1934, which was slightly longer with one additional window on each side and had a small seat for children or as luggage space in the back. This car was advertised as the German "Volkswagen" (a term that means, literally, "people's car").

The Volkswagen Beetle connection

With the Ardie-Ganz, Adler Maikäfer and Standard Superior cars, as well as his progressive writings and promotion of the concept of a ''Volkswagen'' (people's car) in Motor-Kritik magazine since the 1920s, Josef Ganz is claimed by some to have had input into the

Volkswagen Beetle The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning " beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...

.Was Volkswagen's creator Jewish?
(a Dutch website) These cars had some of features of the later Volkswagen Beetle, such as the tubular chassis, rear-mounted engine and independent wheel suspension with swing axles. While the Volkswagen Beetle was produced in its millions after World War Two, the name of Josef Ganz was largely forgotten. In 2004, Dutch journalist Paul Schilperoord started researching the life and work of Josef Ganz, and in 2011 he published ''The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz: The Jewish Engineer Behind Hitler's Volkswagen''.

References

{{Reflist
Did Josef Ganz Create the Beetle?Joseph Ganz Foundation
Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of Germany Volkswagen Group Rear-engined vehicles Rear-wheel-drive vehicles Automobiles with backbone chassis