Volkswagen (car)

SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

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At the age of fifteen, Porsche built a complete electrical installation for his home. In 1894 he went to technical school in Vienna. Four years later he became Manager of the test department of the Bela Egger concern, which later became part of the Brown Boveri organization where he became the first Assistant in the calculating section. In 1899 he joined the long-established coachbuilders Jacob Lohner, and in 1902 a car of his design with mixed drive won the 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) class in the Exelberg races. In 1905 he joined the Austro-Daimler Company as Technical Director; his subsequent designs included an 85 hp mixed-drive racing car in 1907 and in 1912 an air-cooled aircraft engine which came to be known in later years as the "great-grandfather" of the Volkswagen engine. In 1916, he became Managing Director of Austro-Daimler.

In 1921 he designed his first small car, which, appearing under the name of Sasch, won its class in the 1922 Targa Florio, a gruelling road-race in Italy. In 1923 Porsche left Austro-Daimler and joined the Daimler Company in Untertürk-heim, near Stuttgart, Germany. In 1929 he joined the firm of Steyr in Austria as a director and chief engineer, and in 1930 he set up his own independent design office in Stuttgart. In 1932 he visited Russia, and in the same year completed the design calculations for the Auto-Union racing car.

In 1934, with his son Ferry (b. 1909), he prepared a plan for the construction of the German "people's car", a project initiated by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime; in June of that year he signed a contract for the design work on the Volkswagen. Racing cars of his design were also successful in 1934: the rear-engined Auto-Union won the German Grand Prix, and another Au to-Union car took the Flying Kilometre speed record at 327 km/h (203.2 mph). In 1935 Daimler-Benz started preproduction on the Volkswagen. The first trials of the cars took place in the autumn of 1936, and the following year thirty experimental cars were built by Daimler-Benz. In that year, Porsche visited the United States, where he met Henry Ford; in October an Auto-Union took the Flying Five Kilometre record at 404.3 km/h (251.2 mph). On 26 May 1938, the foundation stone of the Volkswagen factory was laid in Wolfsburg, near Braunschweig, Germany.

In October 1945 Ferdinand Porsche was arrested by a unit of the United States Army and taken to Hessen; the French army removed him to Baden-Baden, then to Paris and later to Dijon. During this time he was consulted by Renault engineers regarding the design of their 4CV and designed a diesel-engined tractor. He was finally released on 5 August 1947. His last major work before his death was the approval of the design for the Cisitalia Grand Prix car.

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coccinelle [kɔksinεl]

( = insecte) ladybird (Brit), ladybug (US)

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1) ( insecte) ladybird, ladybug US

2) (colloq) ( voiture) beetle (colloq), Volkswagen® car

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coccinelle nf

1 ( insecte) ladybird, ladybug US;

2 ○( voiture) beetle○, Volkswagen car.

[kɔksinɛl] nom féminin

1. ZOOLOGIE ladybird (UK), ladybug (US)

2. [voiture] beetle (UK), bug (US)

Proper name. Une vévé: A Volkswagen car. (The strange phonetics of this word can be explained by the fact that the VW initials do not exactly roll off the tongue in French where W is pronounced 'double-v'.)

1) General subject: baby car, midget car, mini-car

2) Colloquial: compact

3) Engineering: light car, minicar, runabout, small-displacement motor-car

4) Automobile industry: baby car (до 1 л)

5) German: Volkswagen

6) Ecology: small car

7) Business: economy car

8) Makarov: compact car

1 never.

no me cuentan nunca nada they never tell me anything

casi nunca viene he almost never comes, he hardly ever comes

¿no le has visto nunca? have you never seen her?, haven't you ever seen her?

como nunca like never before

más que nunca more than ever

nunca jamás o más never more o again

¡nunca vi nada parecido! I never saw anything like it!

2 ever.

never, not on your life.

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► adverbio

1 never

2 (en interrogativa) ever

■ ¿has visto nunca cosa igual? have you ever seen anything like it?

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más que nunca more than ever

nunca jamás never ever

nunca más never again

ser lo nunca visto to be unheard of

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ADV never

- nunca es tarde si la dicha es buena

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adverbio never

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= never, not at all, ever!, never in a month of Sundays.

Ex. Plans were made to issue a concise version of AACR1, but these plans never came to fruition.

Ex. There's a big difference between returning a book late and not at all.

Ex. Consider for example, a teacher who doesn't change his password (ever!) or can't be bothered to log out, all the firewalls and antivirus programs in the world will not protect a school's network.

Ex. The two stepsisters also wondered who the newcomer was, for never in a month of Sundays, would they ever have guessed that the beautiful girl was really poor Cinderella who talked to the cat!.

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* ahora más que nunca = now more than ever.

* la ciudad que nunca duerme = the city that never sleeps.

* más que nunca = more than ever before, more than ever.

* más que nunca antes = more... than ever before, more than ever before, more than ever.

* más vale tarde que nunca = better late than never.

* no estar nunca satisfecho = enough + be + not/never + enough.

* no terminar nunca de tener problemas con = have + no end of problems with.

* nunca jamás = never again.

* nunca más = never again.

* nunca + pensar = thought never + enter + Posesivo + head.

* nunca se sabe... = one never knows....

* nunca + Verbo + ni un + Nombre = never + Verbo + one + Nombre.

* nunca visto = all-time, unseen.

* persona que nunca se deshace de nada = hoarder, packrat, magpie.

* por no decir nunca = if ever.

* viejas costumbres nunca desaparecen, las = old ways never die, the.

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adverbio never

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[ Grammar notes (Spanish) ] never

nunca te he mentido or no te he mentido nunca I have never lied to you

nunca es tarde it's never too late

no viene casi nunca he hardly ever comes

aquello fue algo nunca visto it was absolutely incredible

hoy más que nunca today more than ever (before)

bailó como nunca she danced like never before

nunca más le volvió a escribir she never wrote to him again

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◊ como nunca like never before;

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nunca adv

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adv never;

nunca jamás o

más never again;

más que nunca more than ever

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nunca adv

1) : never, ever

nunca es tarde: it's never too late

no trabaja casi nunca: he hardly ever works

nunca más : never again

nunca jamás : never ever

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nunca adv never / not... ever

Con el verbo en afirmativo se utiliza never

Con el verbo en negativo se utiliza ever

SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Wankel was first employed at the German Aeronautical Research Establishment, where he worked on rotary valves and valve sealing techniques in the early 1930s and during the Second World War. In 1951 he joined NSU Motorenwerk AG, a motor manufacturer based at Neckarsulm, near Stuttgart, and began work on his rotary engine; the idea for this had first occurred to Wankel as early as 1929. He had completed his first design by 1954, and in 1957 his first prototype was tested. The Wankel engine has a three-pointed rotor, like a prism of an equilateral triangle but with the sides bowed outwards. This rotor is geared to a driveshaft and rotates within a closely fitting and slightly oval-shaped chamber so that, on each revolution, the power stroke is applied to each of the three faces of the rotor as they pass a single spark plug. Two or more rotors may be mounted coaxially, their power strokes being timed sequentially. The engine has only two moving parts, the rotor and the output shaft, making it about a quarter less in weight compared with a conventional piston engine; however, its fuel consumption is high and its exhaust emissions are relatively highly pollutant. The average Wankel engine speed is 5,500 rpm. The first production car to use a Wankel engine was the NSU Ro80, though this was preceded by the experimental NSU Spyder prototype, an open two-seater. The Japanese company Mazda is the only other automobile manufacturer to have fitted a Wankel engine to a production car, although licences were taken by Alfa Romeo, Peugeot- Citroën, Daimler-Benz, Rolls-Royce, Toyota, Volkswagen-Audi (the company that bought NSU in the mid-1970s) and many others; Daimler-Benz even produced a Mercedes C-111 prototype with a three-rotor Wankel engine. The American aircraft manufacturer Curtiss-Wright carried out research for a Wankel aero-engine which never went into production, but the Austrian company Rotax produced a motorcycle version of the Wankel engine which was fitted by the British motorcycle manufacturer Norton to a number of its models.

While Wankel became director of his own research establishment at Lindau, on Lake Constance in southern Germany, Mazda continued to improve the rotary engine and by the time of Wankel's death the Mazda RX-7 coupé had become a successful, if not high-selling, Wankel -engined sports car.

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< mvhcl> (long, e.g. on Volkswagen beetle and pickups) ■ Trittbrett n

< nav> ■ Laufsteg m ; Umlauf m

< railw> (antiquated passenger car) ■ Laufsteg m

n. f. 'Beetle', the Volkswagen motor car that sold for over thirty years without changing its shape (also: vévé).