SPECIFICATIONS
Make Volkswagen
Model Kommandeurwagen Type 877
Nationality German
Year 1941-1944, 1946
Used by Germany
Production Run 669 (believed)
Engine Volkswagen air-cooled fl at-four
overhead valve
Fuel Petrol
Displacement 1,131cc
Power 25bhp@3000rpm
Torque 49lb ft@2000rpmTransmission Porsche-designed gearbox, non-
synchromesh transaxle with integral fi nal drive
unit. Limited slip differential. Rear-wheel drive
with switchable front-wheel drive and locking
differentials
Type Four-speed manual with additional off-
road and reverse gear
Suspension Front : Fully independent with
transverse, multi-leaf torsion bars and
telescopic shock absorbers. King- and link-
pin design. Rear: Fully independent swing
axle with twin solid torsion bars and lever
arm shock absorbers. Reduction gears onrear axles
Brakes Drum brakes all round
Wheels 4J x 16in pressed steel wheels
Tyres 5.25 x 16 crossply tyres,
Kronzprinzrader sand tyres optional
Crew/seats One, threeDimensions
Length 13ft 4.2in (4.7m)
Width 5ft 0.6in (1.54m)
Wheelbase 7ft 10.5in (2.4m)
Weight 2734lbs (1240kg)
Ground clearance 10.4in (26.5cm)becoming much more associated with peace-
loving hippies of the 1960s than with the Third
Reich of the 1930s. And, it’s thanks to this
transformation, that seeing a Beetle in a war
movie would be like watching Herbie the Love
Bug menace a puppy. Walt Disney would be
mortifi ed!
And yet the Beetle did go into battle. For
alongside the Kübelwagen and Schwimmwagen,
the factory at KdF-Stadt (Stadt des Kraft-
durch-Freude-Wagens bei Fallersleben,
as Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg base was
ponderously and ominously known) did turn
out Type 1s markedly adapted for military
purposes. What was offi cially known as the
‘Leichter geländegängiger PKW, 4-sitziger,
4-radgetriebener Geländewagen’ (light off-
road passenger car, four seats, all-wheel drive
off-road vehicle) but rather more succinctly as
the Type 877 Kommandeurwagen would be
instantly recognisable to anybody familiar with
Volkswagen’s most ubiquitous post-war product.
But beneath its Beetle body was the chassis of
the Kübelwagen mated to the four-wheel drive
system of the Schwimmwagen. The result was
a vehicle offering better off-road ability than theformer and more protection than the latter.
Looking for all the world like the evil cousin
of the modifi ed Volkswagen Baja Bugs of
the late-1960s onwards, the chief visual
differences between a standard Beetle and a
Kommandeurwagen were the larger, chunky-
tyred wheels, wider wings and raised ground
clearance.
The type was born out of the prototype four-
wheel drive Type 86 Kübelwagen, which in turn
gave rise to the fi rst Schwimmwagen Type 128
of 1940.
Given that the factory had prepared for massOne
of the
1946-built
British Army
Kommandeurwagens
being tested on a
sand bank. Bumpers
were removed on these two
post-war Type 877sWhether two-wheel or four-wheel drive, the Kommandeurwagen proved itself quite adept away from the road
An 82E two-wheel drive Kommandeurwagen
being towed out of trouble. The four-wheel drive
877 might have coped with this rather better