--- title: Volkswagen: Photos From the Wolfsburg Factory, 1951 description: On the anniversary of the founding of Volkswagen, LIFE.com offers a series of photos made at the company's famous Wolfsburg plant in 1951. canonical: https://time.com/3877191/volkswagen-photos-from-the-wolfsburg-factory-1951/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-05-28T02:00:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:52.156Z og:title: Volkswagen: Photos From the Wolfsburg Factory, 1951 og:description: On the anniversary of the founding of Volkswagen, LIFE.com offers a series of photos made at the company's famous Wolfsburg plant in 1951. og:url: https://time.com/3877191/volkswagen-photos-from-the-wolfsburg-factory-1951/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c75387a4f908d67/69884a1906f2c1524c33981e/01_111698040.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Volkswagen 1951 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Volkswagen: Photos From the Wolfsburg Factory, 1951 twitter:description: On the anniversary of the founding of Volkswagen, LIFE.com offers a series of photos made at the company's famous Wolfsburg plant in 1951. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c75387a4f908d67/69884a1906f2c1524c33981e/01_111698040.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Inside Volkswagen: How to Mass-Produce an Automotive Icon by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove May 28, 2013 2:00 AM UTC  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951.Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove May 28, 2013 2:00 AM UTC Most people who have ever owned a Volkswagen Beetle or, say, an early, split-windshield VW bus or even a Karmann Ghia will swear that those uncomfortable, relatively bare-bones vehicles were among the favorite cars they’ve ever driven. They’re not for everyone, of course — but for a certain breed of driver, the old-school VWs offered a rare combination of economy, ease of maintenance (this writer, stranded far from any garage, once repaired a busted accelerator cable on a ’67 bug with 12-pound-test fishing line) and, most importantly, _personality_ that so many other mass-produced automobiles lacked. The story of Volkswagen, meanwhile, is among the most fascinating and, in some regards, most troubling of any car manufacturer in existence. One well-documented example of VW’s paradoxical history: in its early days, during World War II, Volkswagen used slave labor (the company has admitted as much) to build vehicles for the Nazi war effort; decades later, the archetypal Volkswagens, the Beetle and the T1 bus, would become _the_ four-wheeled symbols of the “peace and love” movement of the 1960s. From Hitler to hippies: not many other companies, automobile or otherwise, can lay claim to that sort of stranger-than-fiction corporate narrative. Here, on the anniversary of the founding of Volkswagen on May 28, 1937, LIFE.com offers a series of photos made by Walter Sanders at the company’s famous Wolfsburg plant in 1951\. A refugee from Hitler’s Germany himself, who fled his native country the same year VW began making cars, Sanders captures in these pictures of the factory and the factory workers a nation in the process of recreating itself. Here, in black and white, is a portrait of the labor and mechanization that would again make Germany (well, _West_ Germany, anyway) one of the world’s most powerful economies before the end of the century. [**\[MORE: See all of TIME.com’s coverage of Germany.\]**](http://topics.time.com/germany/) _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter_ [_@lizabethronk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Inspecting a VW engine, 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  People gathered around a VW bus, 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  People gaze at photographer Walter Sanders through the open roll-top of a VW bus, 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A young woman and man enjoy themselves beside a VW cabriolet, 1951. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Volkswagen: Photos From the Wolfsburg Factory, 1951 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3877191/volkswagen-photos-from-the-wolfsburg-factory-1951/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3877191/volkswagen-photos-from-the-wolfsburg-factory-1951/"},"headline":"Inside Volkswagen: How to Mass-Produce an Automotive Icon","datePublished":"2013-05-28T02:00:48.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:52.156Z","description":"On the anniversary of the founding of Volkswagen on May 28, 1937, LIFE.com offers a series of photos made by Walter Sanders at the company's famous Wolfsburg plant in 1951.","url":"https://time.com/3877191/volkswagen-photos-from-the-wolfsburg-factory-1951/","keywords":["Automobiles","Autos","Germany","photography","automobile","LIFE Magazine","Science and Technology","1951"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c75387a4f908d67/69884a1906f2c1524c33981e/01_111698040.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ben Cosgrove","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c75387a4f908d67/69884a1906f2c1524c33981e/01_111698040.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Volkswagen 1951","caption":"Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951.","creditText":"Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/automobiles/","name":"Automobiles"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3877191/volkswagen-photos-from-the-wolfsburg-factory-1951/","name":"Inside Volkswagen: How to Mass-Produce an Automotive Icon"}}]}] ```