Vídeo: Dueto: Volkswagen Typ 82 Kübelwagen e Willys-Overland MB 1/4 Ton

🗣️ Transcrição automática de voz para texto.

Here, by our side, we have a Volkswagen Type 82 Kübelwagen. Kübel means bucket, so essentially this means bucket car due to its shape, and this is nothing more than a militarized Volkswagen Beetle. The Volkswagen Beetle was introduced in 1938 by Ferdinand Porsche, later the founder of the Porsche brand, but in 1939 the Second World War broke out and, with the start of the conflict, the production of civilian Volkswagen Beetle was immediately interrupted and replaced by the production of both the Volkswagen Kübelwagen, which we have here, and the Schwimmwagen version, which was the amphibious version. In this case, we are talking about a car, which is essentially a road car converted for military use, so it’s not a car like the Willys that was born to serve the army and therefore, it’s a car that still has very civilian specifications, so to speak. Because it’s based on a civilian car, it also shares characteristics with it, namely, it’s a car with 1131cm³, just like the Beetle, it has only 23 and a half horsepower, four cylinders, but it still has a great terrain adaptation capability, not only because it weighs very little, only 725 kilograms. The car itself is also quite tall, with very thin tires, which helped it The car itself is also quite tall, with very thin tires, which helped to pass through all kinds of terrain and obstacles. With us we have the original Jeep Willys and this specimen is from 1944. This form is better known because it was produced for decades, more or less with small adaptations, but its origin necessarily comes from war and the need to have a car that could adapt to conflicts. In the United States, the idea had been around since the 1930s, precisely since 1930, that it was necessary to create a military vehicle that was not a combat vehicle, but that could adapt to all circumstances. The creation of the Ford Model T brought the notion that it was possible to create a vehicle that was robust enough, simple and adaptable to all of the demands of the combat scenario, so the United States Government began looking who could produce a solution for this scenario. In reality, it was only close to the outbreak of the Second World War that the car began to be developed at a serious pace. A sort of competition was launched and, at the time, the genesis of the car came a little from England because in England there was already the idea of adapting the Austin Seven for combat because it was a very simple, easy to transport, very light vehicle. Being easy to transport was essential to be able to bring it in a truck, in a plane. So, in England, there was already this development, but then with the dissolution of the project, an American company, American Bantam, ended up buying part of that project and starting to study that solution. So, when the competition was opened, they were a bit ahead. Harold Crist was the engineer responsible for the project, he already had a very final notion of what this vehicle should be, he already had the designs, and when the United States opened the competition, they set very difficult goals to meet, Namely, 45 days to present the first prototype and then 70 days to present 75 completed examples. So, not all companies were able to compete under these conditions. American Bantam had difficulty, it did not have production capacity, Ford and Willys also applied for production. Right from the start, the American government said that no one could claim rights over the project because it would always be a collaborative project, where applicants would add ideas, and since it was a benefit for the country and the world, no one could claim rights. Basically, Ford and Willys took advantage of the work that had already been done, they were presented with the American Bantam’s project and they developed it, naturally, they didn’t use it exactly as it was, they evolved the project, but they benefited a bit from the work that had already been done and then, it is known that it was produced on a large scale until they produced 600,000 units of the Willys, made in much larger numbers than the Kübelwagen, its main rival. This is the Type 82, previously there was the Type 62 which was the prototype, it debuted in the Poland campaign in September 1939, and it was a success. The car immediately proved to be quite reliable, very adaptive to the terrain, it did very well on all kinds of tricky terrains and from there it evolved, as was normal, into the Type 82, which we have here, which had some performance improvements. It managed to reduce the minimum speed from 8 to 4 km/h. This might seem strange if we think about a normal car, but that is the speed needed to be able to keep up with troops on foot, and later, obviously due to the limitations that arose in the German industry, only 50,000 units were produced. Plus another 5,000 Schwimmwagens, the amphibious ones. Actually, the Kübelwagen still reached the 55,000 mark, because around 51,000 were made and then another 2,300 or so Kübelwagens were made for the English army after the Second World War which is quite curious. Legend has it that this car, being so light, once saved the life of General Rommel in Africa. They entered a minefield without realizing it, the Horch, which was behind the general with his luggage, hit a mine and exploded. This car, being very light, did not trigger a mine and legend has it that Rommel, back in Berlin, personally thanked Ferdinand Porsche, the creator of the car, for saving his life. It is a highly practical vehicle, as all military vehicles and equipment must be. It has no keys, except for the ignition key, everything is modular, everything opens up, the doors open 180º degrees backwards, so it’s easy to get in and out, it has a very large trunk, because the back seat folds forward, so it can be filled with a lot of things, actually much more capacity or load than the Willys and it can seat four people, which is always a bit more comfortable. Now that the cars have been introduced, it’s time to start the comparison, in this case it’s not a duet, it’s a duel. And I would start by defending the Volkswagen Kübelwagen with some positive characteristics. It weighs much less, 725 kilograms, so it was probably easy to get this car out of the mud or if it was stuck, four soldiers could probably push it out, it has a torsion bar suspension, which gives it a lot of comfort and adaptability to unstable terrain. and, also, in driving, it has a much friendlier steering and turns much more than the Willys. The Willys was already designed, naturally from scratch, for this purpose, so it has obvious advantages. Right from the start, it was designed to carry, as an essential requirement, three soldiers although in reality, sometimes, more were transported, but the rear space is designed to carry one person. The great advantage of the Willys and what made it a bit of a winner in all terrains and what later influenced the entire automotive industry was the ability to have four-wheel drive. There were terrains where a Kübelwagen would have some difficulty, despite being light, it would have some difficulty in getting traction in the mud, the Willys with these tires, with this weight relatively reduced and with the four-wheel drive practically went through everything. Furthermore, it has a gearbox, so a shorter gearbox that allowed it to overcome very steep inclines. All of this was part of the initial requirements, although there was no specific reference model, but angles of approach and departure had already been thought of, meaning the slope of the wall that the wheels can touch to start climbing, the clearance, meaning if something can make the car hang, it needed to have a great ground clearance to avoid that. There were also other initial requirements, in the first specifications it was demanded that the car that the car not be more than 90 cm in height, which proved to be completely impossible to create a car with these characteristics that was not more than 90 cm, it has about 1.15 m, which was then the update to the specifications, 1.15 m with the windshield folded down. This is something it has in common with the Kübelwagen, that was a big advantage, because firstly in combat situations it allowed someone to be there shooting without anything in front, then it allowed mounting weapons on top, or completely removing the windshield, just by unscrewing these very simple screws here. When these cars were transported, for example in planes, by lowering this it gained about 50 or 60 cm which made it much easier for any plane to transport one of these machines. And then there were other characteristics, namely, the wheelbase could not exceed 1.90 meters because of the total size of the vehicle and also its capacity. The shorter it was, the easier it was to overcome obstacles. Another initial requirement impossible to fulfill was the maximum weight, a maximum weight of 560 kg had been defined, naturally, it was not possible to create a four-wheel drive vehicle with those characteristics. The weight of this Willys is about 1050 kg, therefore, much heavier and in that aspect a disadvantage compared to the Kübelwagen. You praised the Willys so much that I’m going to praise the Kübelwagen a little more. It has this sloped front shape that, believe it or not, made a big difference when you had to clear land, or the terrain was a bit more congested, it helped to push through and on the climbs and descents it cleared the path a little for the car itself. And then a characteristic that was already from the Volkswagen Beetle, but came in very handy during the War, both in Africa with very hot weather, and in Eastern Europe in the Eastern Front where the car is air-cooled and during the Russian Winter, often people don’t realize this, but the cold was such that everything froze, the weapons froze, the fuel tanks froze… It got to the point where they had to have fires during the night to keep, under the tanks, so that the gasoline wouldn’t freeze and this car in the morning didn’t need to defrost the water, because it didn’t have water, it was air-cooled and that gave it a little more resistance capacity to the climatic conditions that the Russian Winter presented. One of the characteristics of military vehicles was their adaptability. The Willys could be used without the rear seats and transformed more or less into a pick-up. There were two or three different versions and then there were all the supports for weapons and everything else. There are some disadvantages, namely this small wheelbase and the cargo needs make the space for the driver very, very small, making it hard to imagine a physically well-built soldier driving the Willys, because the pedals are very, very close to the driver, but the truth is that the versatility was very great and the engineering behind the Willys is still surprising, because today we drive this and all the precision of the gearbox, the way the steering works, curiously provides great driving pleasure and it’s not by chance that over the years this Jeep became a symbol of freedom, in essence, appreciated by everyone and which had various updated versions until it became very civilian and very, even refined, we still see this shape in current Jeep vehicles. One of the funny peculiarities of this comparison is that we really associate the Volkswagen with the bad side of military conflict and the truth is that it has an almost sinister look, whereas the Willys, despite being a war vehicle, has a very friendly look and this contrast ends up being quite funny. One of the things that characterizes the Willys is the decoration, which we all know, an interesting peculiarity is that from a certain point in the conflict, from the Normandy landings, the car used to be only decorated with the star, but because of the similarity, from a distance and through an air attack, the resemblance that could exist between the star and the Maltese Cross, which decorated German military vehicles, they ended up creating this circle around it, to avoid it being confused and to prevent an attack on a friendly vehicle. Both vehicles were highly popularized in the cinema, often this car is referred to as Indiana Jones’ car, but really as the Willys says then as it had a continuous evolution over time and ending up then appearing the civilian versions and almost even the format of the civilian Jeep and other brands following this mark that still exists today, ended up making the car perhaps associated with a more recreational side than the Kübelwagen. Still, Volkswagen in the 1970s made a slightly altered version of this car but with the same shape, with this ribbed side, which is a mix between this car and a Mehari, essentially a blend between the Kübelwagen and a Mehari, a version that was also called Kübelwagen curiously, for driving on the beach and maybe to reinvent this model a little to perhaps take away that dark side and transform it into something more related to vacations and relaxation. That being said, as you mentioned, 650,000 of those cars were produced, this one only 50,000. Today, they are both icons of World War II because one is comparable to the other, in fact, the Willys was practically 2/3 of all the vehicles produced, all non-militarized models produced during World War II on the side of the Allies, the rest were Dodge WC. But, at the end of the War when everything was looted and civilians or military personnel tried to get their hands on anything they could take home, especially among the allied forces, many of these cars were absorbed and then taken into their private lives in the post-war period, and at that time a Kübelwagen cost two Willys in exchange for its comfort and rarity. And that would probably be the preference of some military personnel and we are going to drive both of them and understand our own preferences. Exactly.