MOTORING NEWS - The oldest Volkswagen Beetle in the country has been entered for Concours South Africa 2017, which takes place at Sun City on 4 to 6 August.  

The little fawn-coloured "people's car" is a 1949 model, built in Germany and imported to South Africa by a private owner two years before the first Beetle was produced here. 

The car is owned by AutoPavilion, the official Volkswagen Museum in South Africa, located at the factory in Uitenhage, Eastern Cape.  

"We have been very excited about Concours South Africa. We will evaluate this year's event to see if it makes sense to bring a bigger selection of vehicles from Uitenhage in 2018 and use this opportunity to profile our AutoPavilion," said Matt Gennrich, general manager of communications for Volkswagen South Africa. "An event like this plays an amazing role in increasing awareness of our rich motoring heritage in South Africa." 

The car in question has an interesting history, as befits a 68-year-old. It was built just three years after the Volkswagenwerk in Wolfsburg, Germany was rescued from ruin after sustaining severe Allied bombing between 1939 and 1945 during World War Two. 

Ironically, it was an English army group, tasked with overseeing the Wolfsburg area immediately after the war, that realised the best way to clothe and feed the starving population in the area was to make the Volkswagen factory a going concern again as soon as possible.  

The Volkswagens that began trickling off the production line still suffered from the aftermath of the chaotic war years and were sold to the occupying Allied forces in Germany for transport. So successful was this team in setting up production and sales pipelines, that by 1948 the factory was handed back to German management under the leadership of former Opel production expert Heinz Nordhoff.  

Volkswagen production in South Africa started in August 1951, at a new plant in Uitenhage, established by what was then Samad, (South African Motor Assemblies and Distributors), which also built Studebakers and British Austins. The VW-South African tie-up was brokered by Baron Klaus von Oertzen, a man who was instrumental in the inception of the famous 320km Auto Union racers in pre-war Germany as designed by Ferdinand Porsche. 

Von Oertzen managed to get approval for the Volkswagen assembly contract from the South African government by brokering a deal that involved the export of huge quantities of South African wine to Germany. 

This 1949 Volkswagen sedan - the term "Beetle" was not used by the factory - surfaced in South Africa in Middelburg, Mpumalanga (Transvaal), in 1971. It became famous at a national competition ran jointly by the magazine Wheels and Volkswagen South Africa to find the country's oldest Beetle. The car was at this time owned by a Mr David Rubin, who was given a brand new 1300 Beetle in exchange for the classic. 

Christened simply "Jan", the 1949 bug went on display around South Africa before coming to rest at Uitenhage, where it went into storage and eventually fell into a state of minor disrepair. Just over a year ago, "Jan" was rescued by a namesake, Jan Schiedeck-Jacht, who is head of product engineering at VWSA in Uitenhage. He organised a team of enthusiasts from the product engineering division at Uitenhage to restore the Beetle. "The car was stripped right down to every last nut and bolt, with the body removed from the floor-pan. Every part was either refurbished or replaced with original parts," says Gennrich. "Where parts were unobtainable, they were made in our product engineering facility." 

In an amazingly short seven months, the fully-restored 1949 Volkswagen sedan was back in showroom condition. Care was taken to restore the power capability from its 1 100cc air-cooled boxer four-cylinder engine to its original 18kW, as it had been in 1949 when the stated top speed was just over 100km. 

At Concours South Africa, the team's work will come under the scrutiny of a top international panel of judges, led by Wayne Harley, curator of the Franschhoek Motor Museum. For more information, visit www.concourssa.co.za.  

Alternatively, e-mail co-organiser Paul Kennard on paul@concourssa.co.za or call him on 082 851 3300.  

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