The day before yesterday, we visited the South African Volkswagen factory as well as the “Place of Cars and Legends”, its VW museum called “AutoPavilion”, in Uitenhage.

Johan Wagner, the manager of the Volkswagen museum, welcomed us personally and guided us through this wonderful exhibition about Volkswagen in South Africa.

We were very lucky that we got the chance to meet this South African “Volkswagen rock of ages”, Johan Wagner, as he’ll eventually retire from his work next week.

Above you can see the first and very last Beetle, manufactured in South Africa. They produced Volkswagen Bugs already in 1951, and unfortunately stopped in 1978.

We also had an very interesting tour, guided by one of the management personnel named Zak Davids, who showed us the assembly lines, where they’re manufacturing the VW Polo nowadays. Thank you, Zak, for giving us that perfect insight of Volkswagen!

We felt like VIPs after all Johan Wagner has done for us. He even invited us to lunch. And afterwards, Heilie Combrink, from the press showed up and took pictures of Herbie.

Actually, the “AutoPavilion” was the first official Volkswagen museum we’ve ever visited so far. And we really loved it! We can highly recommend going to see this place.

The exhibition also included very special VWs, just as the prototype “1021” – a kind of “Volkswagen Jeep” with an air-cooled Beetle engine – or a VW Bug 1303, originally owned by German adventurers, who drove it from the North to the South Cape.

At this point we want to say thank you, Mr. Johan Wagner, for your very warm welcome at Volkswagen as well as the “AutoPavilion” in Uitenhage and these lovely presents!