VW Type III: What is it?

Most folks around the globe (where there are roads) are quite familiar with the Volkswagen Type I, known to English speakers as the Beetle.

Production of the VW Beetle began in earnest shortly after World War II. In the early 1950s, VW added the Type II (Transporter, Bus, Microbus, Station Wagon, Kombi, or whatever flavor you prefer!).

This utilitly vehicle had a vastly greater interior volume and shared the Beetle's air-cooled rear-engine design.

As you might guess, the next vehicle to be produced by VW was called the Type III. (They must have stayed up late coming up with that one!)

The three basic "flavors" of the Type III are the 1500/1600 Sedan (Notchback), the 1500/1600 Variant (Squareback) and the 1600TL (Fastback). The Type IIIs share many of the Beetle's design fundamentals, but in a more run-of-the-mill (for the 1960s!) appearing package. These hypertext documents are dedicated to this groovy VW.

In case you're wondering, VW did produce a Type IV. These are known as the 411 and 412, but never reached even the modest popularity of the Type III.

(You can get more Type IV information from the pages maintained by Jens Vagelpohl. Note that the Type IV pages are undergoing reconstruction as of early 1997, so it's hard to tell what you'll find there at the moment.)