Thursday, June 30, 2011

Theme : Volkswagen Beetle - 05

The Volkswagen Beetle was surely famous in Europe.
The Swedish are known for Saab and Volvo, but the German Volkswagen had its admirers in this Scandinavian country as well.
At least, the Swedish post issued in 2009 a booklet dedicated to 'old' cars.



From top to bottom:
The Volkswagen Beetle 1200
A Volvo PV 444
A Cadillac Coupé de Ville
The Citroën DS 19
and finally a Ford Mustang Convertible.

Now to the Beetle stamp in particular
We see a nice engraved stamp, with a split-window Beelte (rare window)

It's clearly a split window, right.
Split windows were made from the beginning, until  March 1953.
Then, the window became 'oval' until August 1957.
After that time, the window became much larger, and we call those Volkswagen Beeltes, the 'standard 1200'.
However, if we look at the bottom of the stamp, we see something weird...
Indeed, not TYPE 1 is written, but the much younger model '1200'

Another thing I found was the front of the car:
As it is a spit-window, I expected the Wolfsburg-logo on the front side, unfortunatly, it's missing.
The grip is different also




The wheels of the split-window Volkswagens, were in two colours, but not on the stamp:






Finally, I very doubtfull if the split window Beetle ever was made in yellow...
I know of a cream-coloured type 82 E, the so called Kübelwagen with the body of a split window.
The wheels however of this type are for military use, and not as depicted on the stamp.

No comments: