Volkswagen EA48
Volkswagen EA48 — a deeply unusual car for VW, and arguably the company’s second-ever truly clean-sheet design.
The EA48 was meant to sit below the Beetle in VW’s lineup — a response to postwar Europe’s demand for ultra-basic, affordable transportation. Believe it or not, there were people who found the Beetle too luxurious. Rubber mats and a painted metal dash? Far too extravagant, apparently.
VW turned to engineer Gustav Mayer in 1953 to create a sub-Beetle car. Mayer had worked at Lloyd, which built the barebones Lloyd 300 — a tiny, ultra-cheap car with a two-stroke engine and a body made of wood and leatherette. VW gave Mayer a shot at designing something even more affordable than the Beetle.
The result was the EA48: a front-wheel-drive, unibody hatchback — VW’s first of both. Unlike the Beetle and the Type 2 bus, which shared components, the EA48 was all new. No Beetle platform, no familiar flat-four — it was powered by a unique air-cooled flat-twin engine, likely based on half a Beetle engine, but featuring completely new components.
The prototype got a 600cc version with about 19 horsepower. Cooling was an issue, so a Porsche fan setup was added. The whole powertrain had shades of the Citroën 2CV, right down to its minimalism.
Design-wise, it looked like a quirky cross between a 2CV and a Renault 4. It had no external trunk access (loading luggage required awkward maneuvers over the back seat), no rear side windows (cost-cutting for the prototype), and seats made from metal tubes with fabric stretched across — more patio chair than car seat. The interior was a mashup of new and reused VW parts, but even had a unique speedometer that topped out at 100 km/h.
Despite its limitations, the EA48 was surprisingly forward-thinking. It used MacPherson struts up front, well ahead of VW’s mainstream adoption of the layout decades later. In fact, aside from its longitudinal engine, the EA48 came astonishingly close to the Mini in form and concept — just six years before the Mini even debuted. But where the Mini’s transverse engine changed the industry forever, the EA48 missed that mark.
Sadly, the EA48 never got the green light. Part of that was internal — VW feared it might eat into Beetle sales. But the real veto came from the German government. Economic minister Ludwig Erhard warned VW against competing with smaller domestic manufacturers like Lloyd and Goliath, fearing it would destabilize the fragile postwar auto market.
Only a few EA48 prototypes were ever built, and only a handful of photos survive.
