The people’s car – generically, Volkswagen in German – is almost as old as the automobile, and the type was familiar in Germany long before the advent of the Volkswagen. Usually these “popular” cars were minimal cars, though size and simplicity did not necessarily bring them within the reach of the ordinary man in the street. Henry Ford did build a successful universal car, to sell at a low price, but his Model T with its 2.9-litre engine was by no means a small car, nor was the Model A that followed it. When it was in production in the late 1920s, small “proper” cars in Germany ra