Made in Mexico and exported to the UK

 

 

An initial batch of of six Beetles from ‘CKD’ kits (Completely Knocked Down — effectively a flat-pack car and engine dispatched from Germany) had to be made and then sent back to VW’s HQ in Wolfsburg for inspection, to prove that O’Flaherty’s team was able to make the cars to the right quality levels.

That test passed, kits to make 46 cars were sent to Dublin, and O’Flaherty got to work. Larry Mooney was among those making early Beetles. He would eventually become the head of marketing and PR for Volkswagen in Ireland
“I wasn’t quite there in the factory on the Shelbourne Road on day one, but almost. My father was a schoolteacher, and he as keen for me to do engineering, but I was always a car nut. So he got very upset because I was so keen on cars

“O’Flaherty couldn’t stand someone being idle or standing still. So he got the assembly manager to come and interview me – I was only 14, but they went back and reported that I knew a lot about cars and was very keen, so I was appointed as an apprentice mechanic. But then I was put into the factory assembling Beetles for six months. So I knew where every nut, bolt and cable was on the Beetle before I went into the service department. The trouble was that I was now 15 and keen and the 40-year-olds in the service department didn’t fancy being told about the cars by me. The attitude was ‘will you ever go away you little red-headed b******…’

“Basically there was no German involvement in the operation aside from maybe one or two people. The cars came in in boxes, which were examined by customs at the docks, before being picked up and brought to the Shelbourne road. You won’t believe it but one of those customs inspectors was actually Ronnie Delaney, who went on to win Olympic gold for Ireland in Melbourne in 1956.