Zertifikat

A little over a week ago I applied for Gretchen’s ‘birth certificate’ through the Volkswagen Auto Museum. I was delighted when I arrived back from work yesterday to find a large envelope from VW in my pigeon hole. Wasting no time I tore the envelope open (drum roll)…..

Probably the biggest surprise for me was that she was built in Belgium! This got me very curious because I had not come across this before and so I decided to do a quick search online, but I did not find any relevant information. So, if anyone reading this blog knows anything about Belgium built Beetles, please leave a comment and share your insight.  

Edit 05/12/12: I have found out a bit more about Belgium built beetles!

The Belgian company was called D'ieteren and the assembly plant was located in Vorst/Forest, which is an area in the south-western part of Brussels. D‘ieteren surrendered the plant at the end of 1970 after which full ownership transferred to Volkswagen and eventually became known as “Volkswagen Vosrt”. Between 1954 and 1975 the plant built 1,143,464 VW Beetles.

 
Here is an extract from an article on coachbuild.com:

“After WW II, Pierre D’ieteren managed to obtain the sales rights for VW and so they became the official Belgian distributor of that German manufacturer from 1948”. “D'ieteren bought a piece of land in 'Vorst' for the assembly of the Studebakers and soon this was followed by the assembly of Volkswagens”.

Today the factory is an Audi manufacturing plant and is known as “Audi Brussels”. More information can be found on the Audi Brussels wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_Brussels