1. Introduction

This analysis is based on the fully evaluated "market reports" from the magazine Auto Motor und Sport (AMS) from 1968 to 1974. From them I was able to get the monthly German sales figures (the registration figures for the VW Type4 were actually shown separately at the time!) to the piece.

Furthermore, I received from the archives in Wolfsburg the list of all countries to which Type 4 were exported and the quantity sold there, broken down into sedans (2 and 4-door without distinction) and Variant models.

In addition to this information, I received the German registration statuses from Flensburg on 07/01/72, 07/01/73, 07/01/74 and 07/01/75, broken down by the various Type 4 vehicle types and engines, from the Federal Motor Transport Authority in Flensburg. Unfortunately, the figures from July 1, 1969, July 1, 1970 and July 1, 1971, which are also of interest to us, are no longer available in Flensburg.

The production figures (by calendar year) come from the VW Museum in Wolfsburg, which are printed on the wall there.

All other information regarding the years is given in VW model years (MY is from August 1st to July 31st) if calendar years are not expressly mentioned.

Since it was very difficult to find out all the information on this subject, I am grateful for every comment and correction, preferably by email to shwalde@live.de

 2. Overview of all sales regions 

When the VW 411 came onto the German market in August 1968 as the "Zyklop" (single instead of double headlights) with a 68 hp carburettor engine, the VW sales side had very high expectations of the new vehicle. It was believed to be able to produce and sell up to 1,000 vehicles a day, which would have corresponded to a sales volume of up to 300,000 vehicles per year.

Ultimately, over the entire 6-year sale, only slightly more than the targeted annual production was sold, namely 367,728 pieces. The Type 4 was a respectable flop for VW. If VW hadn't introduced the Passat in 1973 with the help of Audi and the Golf from 1974, it would have been quite likely that it would have remained the last new model from VW.

In the first 3 calendar years (1968-1970), the domestic share was still dominant at around 50% (see Diagram 3), from the 4th calendar year 1971 (model year 1971/72) the export share rose sharply (up to 81% in the calendar year 1971), driven by the start of sales in America from March 1971, in the middle of the 1971 model year. The domestic share fell to 18% in the following years.

Sales in the USA began exclusively with injection engines (in MY 71 still with the code letter "W", the same engine as in Germany). The engines developed for the USA emissions legislation (code letter "EA") were then available from August 1971. The later US-specific "EB" engines were used on August 1, 1972 and finally, from August 1, 1973, the "EC" engines came in the VW 412, the only VW 412 engines with L-Jetronic, adapted for the exhaust gas legislation in California

Diagram 1 shows the sales figures in Germany, the USA and the rest of the world in a graphic breakdown.

According to these statistics, a total of almost exactly one third of all vehicles with 119,094 were sold in Germany, another third with 119,627 vehicles in the USA and the last slightly stronger third with 129,007 vehicles in a total of 145 other countries.

The total export share was 68%.

In model year 1969 (Zyklopen year) the Type 4 seems to have been exported only to a limited extent (Zyklop brochures for Benelux, Denmark, England, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and South Africa are known ).

Unfortunately, there are only sales figures for individual calendar years per country from 1971, for the years 1968 to 1970 there are no individual figures per country. The VW export statistics also do not show when exports were made to a specific country.

Outside of Germany and the USA, volumes relevant to VW were not sold in any single country in the 6 years.

If you now look at the statistics for the sales figures in the top 10 markets (including Germany and the USA), it shows that exactly 91.8% of the Type 4 vehicles were sold in these 10 markets with 337,755 vehicles. The other 137 markets therefore played no role in terms of sales with almost 30,000 vehicles sold in 6 years.

The third largest market was South Africa with a total of 34,452 right-hand drive vehicles. Then England with only 13,367 right-hand drive vehicles, followed by Belgium with 12,110 units and Canada with 10,006 vehicles. After these 6 markets (incl. USA and Germany), no other country has reached a five-digit sales figure in 6 years, see Diagram 2.

But there were a total of 107 countries with less than 100 total sales in 6 years!

CKD sales

CKD = "Completely knocked down" means that the vehicle is delivered disassembled to the destination country and assembled there locally in order to save on the high import duty. Often, some components were also procured locally.

This type of production took place mainly in South Africa (21,924 pieces were CKD, so the in-house production in South Africa was 12,528 pieces; blue/orange striped bar in diagram 2). The conversion from CKD production to complete in-house production probably took place when the VW412 started up in autumn 1972. This means that all VW412 vehicles from South Africa are the only Type 4 vehicles that were not manufactured in Germany.

There were other CKD production sites in Portugal (CKD = 474 sedans, plus import of 131 complete vehicles) and to a lesser extent in Malaysia/Singapore with 58 CKD vehicles (44 sedans and 14 variant, plus import of 19 sedans). In all other VW plants worldwide there was no Type 4 production.

Table 1 shows the sales figures and the breakdown by sedan and estate models for the top 20 markets (including Germany and the USA). On average, the proportion of variants is around 50%, but individual countries clearly fall outside of this rule, such as Belgium (22% variant), Finland (80% variant), and France (23% variant). And the

Japanese have never seen a single variant (0%)!

In the largest Type 4 market, the USA, the variant share was 56.8% and in the second largest market, Germany, 46.4%. In Germany one has to take into account that only sedans (Zyklop) were sold in the 1969 model year, the market entry in the USA and Canada did not take place until March 1971 and in the later years the Variant share in

Germany also rose steeply. Unfortunately, none of the VW export data contains a breakdown by 2 or 4-door sedans, so it is no longer possible to subdivide the sedans.

Also in this table, for countries 1 to 10, the respective country's share of the total sales of 367,728 units can be seen as a percentage, i.e. Norway e.g. with 1.7%. Markets 11 to 20, together with 21,840 units, only account for just under 6% of total sales. The remaining 127 markets still share 2.3% or 8,133 vehicles, an average of 64 vehicles per country. An overview of the sales figures in the countries from position 21 to position 50 is shown in the appendix under point 4.

The export share has almost doubled since 1971, with exports to the USA having a major impact on this development. The total export share started at 52.4% in 1968 and increased to almost 82% in 1974, see Table 2 and Chart 3. These figures are in relation to calendar years

specified. The highest total production was in the 1971 calendar year with almost 80,000 units, of which a good 64,000 were exported.

Sales of the Type 4 in the US

In the 1970s, the USA was by far the most important sales market for the VW Group. In the years 1971 to 1973 between 500,000 and 600,000 were made annually

Vehicles sold in the US, approx. 70% of them Beetles. It was therefore obvious to offer the Type4 there as well. The reason why this only happened in the middle of the 1971 model year in March 1971 (2174 vehicles) was probably due to technical approval requirements

and their implementation in the vehicle.

As already mentioned, 119,627 vehicles were sold there in just over 3 years (only 119,397 were directly exported, the difference of 230 vehicles was probably sold to soldiers in Germany). Thus, the average annual sales were twice as high as in Germany, since the Type 4 was offered here for a total of 6 years and almost exactly the same number of vehicles were sold.

37,597 vehicles (21,026 sedans, 16,571 variants) were sold in the USA in 1971, 26,779 vehicles (11,946 sedans, 14,833 variants) in 1972, and a total of 30,986 vehicles in 1973

(11,212 Lim., 19,774 Var.) and in 1974 a total of 24,028 vehicles (7,339 Lim., 16,689 Var.). Even in 1975 another 7 Type 4 were exported to the USA, where they came from will probably remain a mystery forever.

Thus, 51,528 sedans and 67,869 Variants were delivered to the USA. The

Assignment in 411 and 412 is not recognizable in the calendar year 1972 (in which both were exported), but if one assigns the calendar year 1972 in equal parts it would be

a total of 50,987 from the VW411 and 68,410 vehicles from the VW412.

Even with the USA sedan figures, there is no breakdown into the two different sedan types. It was interesting that basically all 4-door sedans and all variants were delivered with an automatic transmission, while the 2-door sedan was only sold with a manual transmission because of the "sports car feel" advertised in this way

became.

3. Sales figures in Germany

In Germany, sales began in August 1968. October 1968 remained the best sales month of all time with a total of 4,607 vehicles (FYI: Only sedans were sold in MY 69!), This month figure was never repeated in Germany in the following 6 years even approximately reached.

A total of 27,076 sedans were sold in the first model year from August 68 to July 69. This was only a fraction of the planned amount, so intensive model maintenance measures were carried out (new "E" engine with D-Jetronic injection system and 80 hp, improved transmission, new front mask and many details in the interior) and the Variant model was also launched. But nothing helped, in the second model year there were only 828 more vehicles with 27,904 that could be sold in Germany. Diagram 4 shows sales in Germany from MY 1969 to MY 1974.

Diagram 4 shows that in the fourth model year up to July 1972, the sales figures for the VW411E dropped by around 50% compared to the first two “strong” model years, 1969 and 1970. The introduction of the "new" VW412E was actually able to increase the sales figures significantly for a year to 23,094 units, but overall the figures were homeopathic compared to almost all other vehicles in the group.

The strongest month for the VW 412E was October 1972 with 2,735 units. A total of around 81,224 Type 4s with injection engines were sold in Germany in 4 years. Why there was a complete switch from injection to carburetors in the 1974 model year remains an open question, but the costs probably played a major role. (in the USA the injection remained as L-Jetronic until the end in the MY74). Sales in Germany plummeted again by more than 50% in MY 1974. In MY 1974 only 10,794 VW412(S) (9,237 according to KBA, see Table 3) with carburetors were sold in Germany (the strongest month was October 1973 with 1,793 units), but in the rest of the world an additional 40,000 VW412s were sold at the same time Carburettor models or injection models (essentially USA) sold.

All German registration numbers are taken from the Auto Motor & Sport Magazines (section: "Market Report") and these numbers unfortunately do not take into account different Type4 model types and engine variants, so that the vehicles of the "old type" later in the next model year than Slow sellers were sold, cannot be assigned "backwards" here. Therefore, there are numerical differences to Table 3 (source: KBA Flensburg), since a distinction is made there between the different types (body and engine). Therefore, e.g. the total number of VW 412E there (table 3) with 24,679 pieces is 1,585 pieces higher than in diagram 4 (AMS), which means that 1,585 "E" models from the MY73 were only sold in MY 1974 between the carburettor models as slow sellers . Therefore, the AMS registration number for the MJ74 (10,794 carburetor models, Diagram 4) is 1,557 higher than the more precise, type-specific KBA number (9,237, Table 3), which corresponds almost exactly to the slow-moving number. Diagram 5 shows the course of sales over the months, beginning in August (start of the MY).