decars1-3, Exercise 3: A car for the rich

Model answer (check the details):

Why mainly wealthy buyers: German cars of the 1920s were mostly hand-built or made in small series and were costly to buy and run, so few households could afford them. The inflation of 1923 destroyed savings, and the depression after 1929 reduced incomes again. Compared with the United States, where Ford's assembly line made cars cheap, a much smaller share of Germans owned one.

What this left unsolved: a car for ordinary families. Opel's assembly line, the small Hanomag and the Dixi (a copy of the British Austin Seven) were steps towards it, but a mass market had not appeared by 1933. That gap shaped the plans of the 1930s for a "people's car" (Chapter 6).

Caution: ownership figures should be checked in statistical sources and compared on the same basis (cars per head).