By the late ’60s, VW was in a legitimate full-on panic about replacing the Beetle: somehow, they never really managed to figure this out. The Beetle was just selling too well for too long to worry until it was almost too late. Eventually, the Golf saved the day, but there was a brief moment where it looked like VW’s salvation would be much weirder.After VW bought NSU and Audi in the late ’60s, the much more conventional water-cooled, transverse front-engined Golf/Rabbit was derived from NSU/Audi designs and saved VW’s bacon, as well as set the company’s fundamental technical DNA to this day. But this was a sort of last-minute desperation plan. The goal of replacing the Beetle as VW’s core product went back much further, and almost culminated in a surprisingly sophisticated and unusual car, the EA266 prototype.
via This Fascinating Stillborn VW Prototype Would Have Been Revolutionary.
EA-266
Thanks for reading.
Tim
