The Standard Superior was an

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...

, produced from 1933 to 1935 by '' Standard Fahrzeugfabrik'' of Ludwigsburg, Germany, founded by motorcycle maker Wilhelm Gutbrod and unrelated to the

Standard Motor Company The Standard Motor Company Limited was a motor vehicle manufacturer, founded in Coventry, England, in 1903 by Reginald Walter Maudslay. For many years, it manufactured Ferguson TE20 tractors powered by its Vanguard engine. All Standard's tracto ...

of England. These small cars were designed according to the patents by

Josef Ganz Josef Ganz (1 July 1898 – 26 July 1967) was a Jewish-German car designer born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Hungary). Early years Josef Ganz was born on 1 July 1898 into a Jewish family living in Budapest, then the second-largest ...

and featured rear-mounted

two-stroke engine A two-stroke (or two-stroke cycle) engine is a type of internal combustion engine that completes a power cycle with two strokes (up and down movements) of the piston during one power cycle, this power cycle being completed in one revolution of ...

s. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the same company made

Gutbrod Gutbrod was a German manufacturer of cars, motorcycles and small agricultural machinery. The firm was founded in Ludwigsburg, Germany by :de:Wilhelm Gutbrod, Wilhelm Gutbrod in 1926. It originally built "Standard" branded motorcycles. In 1933 ...

cars and introduced the model

Gutbrod Superior The Gutbrod Superior is a small car, built from 1950 until 1954 by German manufacturer Gutbrod. A total of 6,860 cabriolet saloons and 866 estates were built in less than four years. History In November 1949, a pilot series of the cabriole ...

History

In the first half of 1932, Wilhelm Gutbrod, the President of the Standard Fahrzeugfabrik, came into contact with German engineer Josef Ganz. Ganz had been working on a small car design since the early 1920s and had so far built two prototypes, one for

Ardie Ardie was a company in Nürnberg, Germany that manufactured motorcycles from 1919 until 1958. The company's name derives from that of its founder, Arno Dietrich. At first Ardie made motorcycles with its own 288cc and 304cc single cylinder two ...

in 1930 and one for Adler in 1931, called the

Maikäfer Maikäfer was the nickname of an automobile prototype, built in 1931 by German engineer Josef Ganz at Adler. History Josef Ganz, an independent engineer and editor-in-chief of ''Motor-Kritik'' magazine, was assigned by Adler in December 1930 as ...

(

May Beetle ''Phyllophaga'' is a very large genus (more than 900 species) of New World scarab beetles in the subfamily Melolonthinae. Common names for this genus and many other related genera in the subfamily Melolonthinae are May beetles, June bugs, and Ju ...

). After a demonstration with the Maikäfer by Ganz, Gutbrod was most interested to build a small car according to this design. The Standard Fahrzeugfabrik then purchased a license from Ganz to develop and build a small car according to his design. The prototype of this new model, which was to be called Standard Superior, was finished in 1932. It featured a

tubular chassis Superleggera (Italian for ''Superlight'') is a custom tube and alloy panel automobile coachwork construction technology developed by Felice Bianchi Anderloni of Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera. A separate chassis was stil ...

, a rear mid-mounted engine, and independent wheel suspension with swing-axles at the rear.

Models

The first production model of the Standard Superior was introduced at the IAMA (Internationale Automobil- und Motorradausstellung) in Berlin in February 1933. It had a transverse 396cc, two-cylinder, two-stroke engine mounted in front of the rear axle. Because of some criticism to the body design, not in the least by Josef Ganz in

Motor-Kritik ''Motor-Kritik'' was the title of a progressive automotive magazine, published by the H.Bechhold Verlagsbuchhandlung in Germany from 1929 to 1945. It originated from the earlier ''Klein-Motor-Sport'' magazine. History ''Klein-Motor-Sport'' was th ...

, it was followed in April 1933 by a slightly altered model. In November 1933 the Standard Fahrzeugfabrik introduced yet another new and improved model for 1934, which was slightly longer with one additional window on each side and had a small seat for children or as luggage space in the back. This car was advertised as the German "Volkswagen" (a term that means, literally, "people's car").

The Volkswagen Beetle connection

With the Ardie-Ganz, Adler Maikäfer and Standard Superior cars, as well as his progressive writings and promotion of the concept of a ''Volkswagen'' (people's car) in Motor-Kritik magazine since the 1920s, Josef Ganz is claimed by some to have had input into the

Volkswagen Beetle The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...

.Was Volkswagen's creator Jewish?
(a Dutch website) These cars had some of features of the later Volkswagen Beetle, such as the tubular chassis, rear-mounted engine and independent wheel suspension with swing axles. While the Volkswagen Beetle was produced in its millions after World War Two, the name of Josef Ganz was largely forgotten. In 2004, Dutch journalist Paul Schilperoord started researching the life and work of Josef Ganz, and in 2011 he published ''The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz: The Jewish Engineer Behind Hitler's Volkswagen''.

References

{{Reflist
Did Josef Ganz Create the Beetle?Joseph Ganz Foundation
Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of Germany Volkswagen Group Rear-engined vehicles Rear-wheel-drive vehicles Automobiles with backbone chassis