This archive sold for £2500 (and there is more to come in August) but it was a very different lot from the Penzance sale that is illustrated left, one for which I turned for explanation to a good friend and neighbour who owns and loves an old convertible ‘Beetle’ that he restored some years ago.
This slim work was simply described by the Cornish saleoom as a ‘Handbook Volkswagen Type II. Type 51 Handbuch.
English and German, 27pp comp with illus, orig wps, Wolfsburg Motor Works’ – but it was the fact that this little manual sold at £250 that caught my attention.
Thanks to Charlie, I now know that the VW type 51 was produced in the immediate post-war years of 1945 and 1946 when the British re-started the Wolfsburg factory and was one of a number of variants produced under their supervision, initially for the use of British personnel based in Germany.
The type 11 was the early post-war designation of a ‘civilian’ version that was re-named from 1946 onwards. The manual was published, I am told, in 1946.
