Volkswagen’s Biggest Misstep May Have Been Inventing The Mini Then Ignoring It

Full disclosure: I wrote about this fascinating car nearly a decade ago at The Old Site, but I somehow managed to make myself re-fascinated by this mostly-forgotten relic from over 70 years ago, so I’m not going to fight it. I’m just going to give in and write, again, about one of the most fascinating Volkswagens that never was. It’s a remarkably un-VW VW, and it also represents only maybe the second truly clean-sheet design that Volkswagen as a company has made. It was called EA48.

So what is it about this little car that never even made it to production that is inspiring me to write about it again? I think it has something to do with the unique and peculiar technical characteristics of this car and the circumstances that prevented it from ever getting to market. Then there’s also the fascinating “what-if” angle to it all, because if this particular car had made it to market, it very well could have changed the fate of not just Volkswagen, but of a number of other companies as well.

I mean, I think. Also, I encountered some new pictures of the car and its engine, and that got me all worked up again.

Okay, let’s look at this thing: fundamentally, the EA48 was intended to be a car that would have slotted in below the Beetle, suggesting that there were people out there who felt the Beetle offered just too much size and luxury. Rubber floor mats, a painted metal dashboard – what are you, landed gentry?

Also, look at that slick mustache the thing had for air intakes!

That’s a hard concept to wrap our heads around today, especially for anyone who has seen how spartan and basic early Beetles were, but in postwar Europe of the early 1950s, that was definitely a thing.

In fact, the immediate needs of postwar Europe absolutely dictated product development of Volkswagen in these early years. Remember, the Beetle didn’t actually start as a project of the company we now know as Volkswagen – it started as a product of the German government’s (I just didn’t feel like typing “Nazi” or “reich” or whatever) Strength-through-Joy department, known by the acronym KdF. Volkswagen as the company we know today didn’t start until after the war, and its first in-house vehicle project was the Type 2 bus.

(images: Volkswagen Archives)

Because the recovering economies of Europe needed cheap cargo vehicles, VW adapted the Beetle’s mechanicals into a big box on wheels, and it was a hit. Those recovering economies also needed cheap, basic transportation, and while that’s the role the Beetle was designed for, people were still so broke that even a car like the Beetle proved unreachable to many, which is why extremely basic bubble cars and microcars like the BMW Isetta and Messerschmitt KR200 and Goggomobil existed.

So, to fill this hole, in 1953 VW sought out Gustav Mayer to design this unterkäfer. Mayer was engineer who had previously worked at Lloyd, which was known for making dirt-cheap cars like the Lloyd 300, a car smaller than the Beetle, and cost about DM 1,300 less, thanks to such cost-cutting tricks like having a two-stroke engine about a third the size of the VW’s four-stroke, and a body made of wood and synthetic leather.

The car that Mayer came up with was remarkable, at least in part,  because it was a completely clean-sheet design. It did not use the Beetle’s chassis or engine or anything like that; even the Type 2 bus retained the flat-four drivetrain from the Beetle.

Don’t be fooled by the lack of rear side windows; they would be there, but the prototype saved some money by just using sheet metal. Also absent, but not planned to make it to production, was a trunk lid or hatch. You’d have to load your cargo in over the back seat, awkwardly, but not unheard of for a cheap car. The Nash Metropolitan and Henry J pulled the same cheapskate trick, for example.

The cargo area doesn’t look super easy to get stuff into, especially with the spare wheel there:

Maybe the rear seat could fold down? I hope so. There was also talk that if this car actually made it to market, a trunk that could be accessed from the outside would have been an option.

The EA48 was VW’s first true unibody design; it was also VW’s first FWD car, and used a small, space-efficient two-box body that is not dissimilar from what the Mini would be when it came out in 1959. I mean, look at the two together:

The slightly shorter hood of the Mini hints at the biggest difference in the two cars, conceptually–the Mini had a transverse engine, which, of course, would be the layout that would become dominant in modern cars.

But other than that, the EA48 was remarkably forward-looking, especially for small cars. The EA48 was front engine/front drive, and used a MacPherson front suspension setup, as you can see here:

Look at that! That’s quite a modern-looking front suspension setup for 1953, and wildly different from everything else VW was doing at the time, and wouldn’t be doing until a solid 20 years later, with the Type 4, Super Beetle, and their NSU-derived front-engined cars like the Golf and Passat.

The engine was more in the classic VW tradition, but was still unique; it seems like it was basically just the Beetle flat-four cut in half, but pictures seem to show a completely unique flat-twin design.

There was a 700cc one planned, but the prototype got a 600cc unit that made a not-as-bad-as-it-sounds 19 or so horsepower. Early units overheated, so a Porsche-sourced fan setup – like what you see above there – was used. The engine block looks unique, as do most of the components, and the overall effect seems a lot like the air-cooled flat-twin from the Citroën 2CV.

In fact, a lot of the car has a French feel to it, somewhere between the 2CV and Renault 4. Look at the interior, for example:

Those seats – the tubing with fabric stretched over them, like glorified lawn chairs – those feel incredibly French, for example. That steering wheel is from the early VW parts bin, as are those knobs and pedals – even if they’re flipped upside down – but this speedometer looks unique, which surprises the hell out of me:

The speedo seems forthright, too, as the top speed was right about 100 kph/60 mph, not too bad for a little 19 hp car. But while the typography and look seem like VW instruments of the era, Beetle ones went to 120 kph and had the lights in different locations.

The EA48 also had semaphores, which are delightful, whatever they’re on.

VW’s decision not to put the EA48 into production wasn’t entirely their choice. They had spent a good amount of development time and money on it, and it absolutely could have filled a market niche they wanted. Of course, it could have also cannibalized Beetle sales, and they absolutely didn’t want that, which was a factor.

But the bigger nails in the coffin of the EA 48 came from the German government itself — German economic minister Ludwig Erhard told (quite sternly I imagine) VW that entering the sub-Beetle sector would be too damaging to other German carmakers like Borgward, owners of Goliath and of course Lloyd, where Mayer had come from initially.

I do wonder how much of an impact the EA48 could have had; it definitely predicted the Mini in almost all ways, except, significantly, for what would be the Mini’s most important legacy: the transverse engine. The EA48 felt a bit like a Mini/2CV hybrid and I suspect, priced right, could have been a big success. Would its success have blunted the impact of the Beetle? Or the Mini?

We’ll never really know, of course, but it’s hard not to think about how close VW came to changing the path of small, affordable cars in the world. I mean, they already did, arguably twice, but this could have yet another way. It’s not like they weren’t already a success, of course, but I do wonder if the path of the EA48 would have been one that proved more sustainable in the very long term.

Maybe someone can run a simulation, and let me know?

(top images: Volkswagen Classic)

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