Looking for a good way to display your MG-34? Look no further, but click on over to eBay where this 1944 Schwimmwagen can be yours. A Schwimmwagen (literally “swim car”) was an amphibious version of the VW Kubelwagen utility vehicle. Both were used by the Wehrmacht in WWII, the Schwimmwagen from about 1942 to 1945. Tens of thousands were made, but few survive.

Here’s what the seller says about this vehicle:

1944 Volkswagen Schwimmwagen type 166 for sale by owner. Less than 100 miles since restoration. Needs freshening up. Ran great when I parked it in the warehouse a year ago. Needs fluids changed and a 6 volt battery to run. Comes with some spare parts and trim including a spare transmission and propeller out drive. Photos and documents of restoration done in Germany.

CA license plate    44 VW   Registration status – non – op.   No delinquent DMV fees due.

These don’t come o the market often, and this one’s on eBay through Monday… that’s the good news.

The bad news? The asking price is $180,000.

The VW logo inside a gear? That was the logo of VW in WWII, when it was a unit of the labor-recreation entity Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) of the Reich Labor Ministry. Yes, someone went to extremes over the small details on this restoration.

Yeah, but $180,000, though.

Regardless, we still want it. Hmmm… what can we get for Small Dog MkII? And a couple safes full of guns?

But wait… then we’d need to get the MG-34, wouldn’t we?

This entry was posted in Consumer Alert!, The Past is Another Country on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).

17 thoughts on “For the WWII Collector Who Has Everything”

Bill Robbins

$180K seems awfully steep for what is essentially a Nazi dune buggy. Plus, how do I know that VW didn’t falsify the emissions data?

Sommerbiwak

Dune buggies do not have four wheel drive, cannot swim and there is no propeller either. And no mount for a MG34 or MG42.

Aesop

Touche!

Hognose Post author

People keep picking on poor ol’ VW, just because their founding designer had a three-digit Nazi Party number, and Hitler laid their factory cornerstone.

james

UH,for the world war 2 collector who has everything,why the hell would you buy a second sand rail with aquatic ambitions?!

Sommerbiwak

When you have the Schwimmwagen and the MG34 you need all the accessories for the machine gun. And several sets of uniforms. And this and that and… It is a deep hole. 😉

11b-mailclerk

Collecting is a socially acceptible OCD.

When your collection induces the purchase of a much larger home, you may have transitioned to hording.

Ray

Like most German/Nazi equipment. Its junk built by slaves in a KZ (concentration camp) Made of the cheapest possible materials or the nearest thing to them that could be found. There are so few because they just rusted away while the war raged. The way some guys worship Kraut junk yards you’d think they won the war. The truth is that after 1942 the Nazi slave labor factory’s were turning out piss poor quality junk. Include every thing they had issued to the German armed forces in that statement from boots to armor. It was crap, and it was crap because American MEN were bombing the dog shit out of every place in Germany with a manufacturing plant, rail yard, warehouse, hen house or out house. American MEN mostly draftees , went to Europe and kicked German ass. We won because our Men, our equipment, our training, and our country were BETTER than them. That Nazi junk should be in a museum with a sign reading “Why stupid hurts”.

Haxo Angmark

most of the heavy-lifting against Germany was down by a semi-organized Russian horde. Not “American Men”. And in backing the Reds and destroying Germany, “American Men” tore the beating heart out of White Western Civilization. Just look around at the smoking ruin that is Europe (ex. Russia) and North America.

Aesop

Or, for far less than 1/3rd of that, you could probably build an improved replica, from scratch.

For 180K, you should be able to produce tooling and start selling the replicas by the gross in the back pages of Popular Mechanics & Car & Driver.

It’s a farking schwimmwagen, not a Michelangelo sculpture, fer cripes sake.

If there’s anyone willing to pay that asking price, it should come with a complementary marotte and parti-colored cap with jinglebells on the tail tips.

Cap’n Mike

Very cool.

Amphibius vehicles seem to go for huge money for some reason.

here is the American version, for $225,000

http://www.ima-usa.com/original-u-s-wwii-ford-gpa-seep-serial-number-22741-offered-in-award-winning-factory-restored-condition.html

The Amphicars made in the 60s sometimes sell for 6 figures.

As long as you run any of these amphibious vehicles in fresh water, they will last forever.

One dip in salt water and they will eventualy rot to pieces.

Hognose Post author

At our first summer place, in Rocky Nook, MA, one of our neighbors had an Amphicar which he regularly drove in the Jones River. I can almost remember his name these fifty years on. Mr Nelson? And the house-rich cash-poor old widow up the street had a Renault Dauphine.

Cap’n Mike

I was through that part of Kingston a few months ago.

You wouldnt recognize it.

All the cottages have been turned into McMansions and year round homes.

Hognose Post author

Yeah, I was back a few years ago. We had had two small (1,200 sf or so) houses and the grass lot between was our playground and the parking lot when all the relatives came. One of the houses still had coal in the coal scuttle, and was heated, if that’s the word by the coal-fired stove. Which also heated the water, in a bucket, for clothes washing or the occasional bath.

Had many formative experiences there… it was recognizable in 1985 when I took Plaintiff I there. In 2015, couldn’t figure out which one was which.

Steve M.

Slightly off topic….

I hear the duck boat tours in Boston are actually pretty good. It’s on the list of things to do, but I’m waiting for the kid to get old enough to actually remember the trip.

Amphibious vehicles are always neat.

Slow Joe Crow

If you are willing to go practical instead of original, several companies make replica bodies that take Beetle running gear and some of them are actually amphibious. As a motorcycle guy, if I had an MG34 I’d put in a BMW R75 sidecar rig, because they are so cool looking, and the whole concept is pretty impractical outside of machine gun shoot events.