Something I stumbled on by accident.

- in which country were the first VWs to be assembled outside Germany assembled? (they were CKD Beetle kits).
- the actual first car (or so it is claimed) made from those kits still survives - where is it now?
- in what year did this assembly start and how many Beetles were assembled in that country by the end of that calendar year?
- and finally, am not sure if they did other VWs as well, but their last VW was also a Beetle - in what year??

Hmm, a tricky question.

When I check the export-lists from 1971 to 1974 -of those I own copies-, it became even more irritating.

So in the 1971-list -and only there- are three columns
"CKD-kits for
- Mexico
- Argentina
- South Africa"

Also for many -but not all- countries there are columns
"complete"
"Re-export of Belgium-VW"
"Re-export of CKD Belgium-VW"

- but "CKD" is only mentioned in coherence with "Belgium-VW" ?!?


When you read wee comments under in inbetween the statistics, you found sentences as
"Since January 1964 the export to Mexico is listed beyond the Interamericana countries"

"at export cumulative is to regard: Danmark, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland are EEC-members just since 1.1.1973"

"included Typ 181: in 1971 5.280 and since beginning 6.060 cars, of whose VW de Mexico has after assembling in 1971 exported 193 cars to miscellaneous american countries"

You can have the answer(s) whenever you want, but to keep it going until then:

- Clue - think much earlier than 1970s for start of assembly.
- Possibly a slight clue, or maybe just a strange fact #1 - the same country assembled Heinkel bubble-cars at one stage, and apparently even exported some to Argentina (which is a very unexpected place for them to arrive)
- Possibly a slight clue, or maybe just a strange fact #2 - another (unrelated) big German car firm stopped its assembly in this mystery country in the same year as this VW assembly stopped.

Bonus points for a final question - the last of these Beetles assembled in this mystery country still survives in a local museum collection. What colour is it?

Answers:

The country was Ireland, with Beetle builds starting in October 1950 and 46 or 48 built by the year end. The first one is apparently now on display at the VW museum in Wolfsburg - https://beetle.ie/vehicle/zl2286/ . The final assembled example was 1977 and was green and is preserved unregistered in Dublin museum; Mercedes was the other big German firm which stopped Irish assembly in 1977.

Info from this book review - https://www.completecar.ie/features/post/8198/Book-review-Motor-Assembly-in-Ireland - flick through the gallery photos as well. Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Volkswagen_in_Ireland .