Visiting Wolfsburg in 1946 to explore the possibility of becoming Volkswagen’s first international concessionaire, Dutch businessman Ben Pon was intrigued by a pared back, Type 1-derived parts-mover ‘plattewagen’ which he saw traversing the factory.

Positing that the improvised hack could form the basis of another model line, Pon doodled a van with the driver and engine positioned above the front and rear axles respectively on April 23 rd 1947.

Although his concept struck a chord with VW’s management, demand for the Type 1 (Beetle) was such that productionising the Type 2 (Bus) was not a priority.

A prototype was eventually built and its successors refined via the wind tunnel at the Technical University of Braunschweig with the result that their drag coefficients tumbled from 0.75 to 0.44 (the Beetle / Type 1 was 0.48 by comparison).

Greenlit on May 19 th 1949, the very first Type 2 rolled off the production line just under six months later.

The initial Kombi and Commercial varian...