KOMMANDEURWAGEN VARIATIONS
Type 82E – Two-wheel drive Volkswagen
Kommandeurwagen
Type 877 – Four-wheel drive Volkswagen
Kommandeurwagen
Type 92 SS – Two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive
Volkswagen Kommandeurwagen
for SS use
Type 98 – Four-wheel drive Volkswagen
Kommandeurwagen Cabrioletpinpointed by the Mittelland Canal that ran by
it, saw fi ve months of raids plus an American
bomber crash directly into it. According
to VW itself, at least 60% of the plant was
destroyed. However, it seems limited numbers
of Kommandeurwagens continued to emerge
from underground manufacturing bunkers into
1945, although the fi gures were tiny, especially
after all raw material allocations were stopped
in February 1945. Still, this at least meant
there was a supply of Beetle bodies when the
town and factory fell to the Americans in April
1945 and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical
Engineers (REME) took over control in June. In
addition to using the ruined facility as a repair
workshop, the British restarted production of the
two-wheel drive models – what would eventually
evolve into the civilian Volkswagen Beetle.
It’s believed that 688 two-wheel drive Type
82E and 667 four-wheel drive Type 877
Kommandeurwagens were built during
hostilities.
Pictures of Wolfsburg (as KdF-Stadt had been
renamed in 1945 as part of the ‘de-Nazifi cation’
process) immediately post-war show British
Army offi cers alongside new vehicles that look
suspiciously like high-riding Type 877s... but they
weren’t.
The very fi rst peacetime Beetles had to use
Kübelwagen chassis, until a supplier could be
found to make civilian-type reduced height axle
forgings.
These Beetles on stilts – 295mm above the
road instead of the usual 220mm – were known
as Type 51s and were manufactured until
October 1946. The eventual lowered versions
were christened Type 11s.
However, that wasn’t quite the end of the
Volkswagen Kommandeurwagen story. In
November 1946, REME at Wolfsburg turned
out two more four-wheel drive full-metal-roofed
Type 877s for testing purposes. This pair
differed from the wartime versions by having no
bumpers, smoothed-off front and rear bodywork
overhangs, a roller fi tted up front and the twin
exhaust pipes relocated to exit through the back
wings. These changes helped prevent the cars
digging into the earth on banks and ditches.
The French occupation authorities ordered 100,
but these were never built as the front-drive
tooling had been destroyed, thus making mass
production impossible.
VW wouldn’t dabble with four-wheel drive again
until the military Iltis (Polecat) and a series of
prototype Transporter ‘buses’ during the 1970s.
The public wouldn’t be able to buy a four-wheel
drive VW until the Passat and Transporter
Syncro models of the mid-1980s.
Today, just fi ve four-wheel drive
Kommandeurwagens are thought to survive.
One of the 1946 trial examples was retained as
a Volkswagenwerk staff car, before ending up
in Wolfsburg’s own museum, where it remains
today. There’s a 1943 car in the Porsche
Museum in Gmünd, Austria, while a prototype is
with a collector in Hong Kong. Some enthusiasts
have built replicas, using suitably early parts,
chassis and Beetle bodies – but, as faithful as
they are, they’re not the real thing.
But who knows what might be still lurking in
the abandoned outbuilding of a Russian dacha
somewhere, or buried by drifting dunes in a
Libyan desert? Maybe there are still some
long-lost Kommandeurwagens yet to be
discovered...KOMMANDEURWAGEN VARIATIONS
Type 82EType 82EType 82E – – Two-wheel drive Volkswagen Two-wheel drive Volkswagen
Kommandeurwagen
Type 877Type 877Type 877 – – Four-wheel drive Volkswagen Four-wheel drive Volkswagen
Kommandeurwagen
Type 92 SSType 92 SSType 92 SS – Two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive – Two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive
Volkswagen Kommandeurwagen
for SS use
Type 98 – Four-wheel drive Volkswagen
Kommandeurwagen Cabrioletpinpointed by the Mittelland Canal that ran by
it, saw fi ve months of raids plus an American
bomber crash directly into it. According
to VW itself, at least 60% of the plant was
destroyed. However, it seems limited numbers
of Kommandeurwagens continued to emerge
from underground manufacturing bunkers into
1945, although the fi gures were tiny, especially
after all raw material allocations were stopped
in February 1945. Still, this at least meant
there was a supply of Beetle bodies when the
town and factory fell to the Americans in April
1945 and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical
Engineers (REME) took over control in June. In
addition to using the ruined facility as a repair
workshop, the British restarted production of the
two-wheel drive models – what would eventually
evolve into the civilian Volkswagen Beetle.
It’s believed that 688 two-wheel drive Type
82E and 667 four-wheel drive Type 877
Kommandeurwagens were built during
hostilities.
Pictures of Wolfsburg (as KdF-Stadt had been
renamed in 1945 as part of the ‘de-Nazifi cation’
process) immediately post-war show British
Army offi cers alongside new vehicles that look
suspiciously like high-riding Type 877s... but they
weren’t.
The very fi rst peacetime Beetles had to use
Kübelwagen chassis, until a supplier could be
found to make civilian-type reduced height axle
forgings.
These Beetles on stilts – 295mm above the
road instead of the usual 220mm – were known
as Type 51s and were manufactured until
October 1946. The eventual lowered versions
were christened Type 11s.
However, that wasn’t quite the end of the
Volkswagen Kommandeurwagen story. In
November 1946, REME at Wolfsburg turned
out two more four-wheel drive full-metal-roofed
Type 877s for testing purposes. This pair
differed from the wartime versions by having no
bumpers, smoothed-off front and rear bodywork
overhangs, a roller fi tted up front and the twin
exhaust pipes relocated to exit through the back
wings. These changes helped prevent the cars
digging into the earth on banks and ditches.
The French occupation authorities ordered 100,
but these were never built as the front-drive
tooling had been destroyed, thus making mass
production impossible.
VW wouldn’t dabble with four-wheel drive again
until the military Iltis (Polecat) and a series of
prototype Transporter ‘buses’ during the 1970s.
The public wouldn’t be able to buy a four-wheel
drive VW until the Passat and Transporter
Syncro models of the mid-1980s.
Today, just fi ve four-wheel drive
Kommandeurwagens are thought to survive.
One of the 1946 trial examples was retained as
a Volkswagenwerk staff car, before ending up
in Wolfsburg’s own museum, where it remains
today. There’s a 1943 car in the Porsche
Museum in Gmünd, Austria, while a prototype is
with a collector in Hong Kong. Some enthusiasts
have built replicas, using suitably early parts,
chassis and Beetle bodies – but, as faithful as
they are, they’re not the real thing.
But who knows what might be still lurking in
the abandoned outbuilding of a Russian dacha
somewhere, or buried by drifting dunes in a
Libyan desert? Maybe there are still some
long-lost Kommandeurwagens yet to be
discovered...BELOW: The Kommandeurwagens were clearly
closely related to the Beetles that would do a far
better job of world domination post-warTOP: A Kommandeurwagen amid the factory ruins;
It was scenes like this that the Allies discovered
when they arrived in April 1945ABOVE: British Army personnel at the damaged
Wolfsburg plant with newly produced 1946 Type 51
Beetles which, thanks to their ride height, looked
like wartime Kommandeurwagens but weren’tA wood gas-converted Kommandeurwagen alongside
its Kübelwagen equivalent. Both needed bulky front-
end modifi cations