A car platform is a shared set of common design, engineering, and production efforts, as well as major components, over a number of outwardly distinct models and even types of cars, often from different, but somewhat related, marques. It is practiced in the automotive industry to reduce the costs associated with the development of products by basing those products on a smaller number of platforms. This further allows companies to create distinct models from a design perspective on similar underpinnings. A car platform is not to be confused with a platform chassis, although such a chassis can be part of an automobile's design platform, as noted below.
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👉 Car platform in the context of Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle, officially the Volkswagen Type 1, is a small family car produced by the German company Volkswagen from 1938 to 2003. A global cultural icon known for its bug-like design, the Beetle is widely regarded as one of the most influential cars of the 20th century. Its production period of 65 years is the longest for any single generation of automobile, and its total production of 21.5 million units makes it the most produced car of a single platform in history and the second-highest of all nameplates manufactured in the 20th century.
The Beetle was conceived in the early 1930s. The leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, decided there was a need for a people's car—an inexpensive, simple, mass-produced car—to serve Germany's new road network, the Reichsautobahn. The German engineer Ferdinand Porsche and his design team began developing and designing the car in the early 1930s, but the fundamental design concept can be attributed to Béla Barényi in 1925, predating Porsche's claims by almost ten years. The result was the Volkswagen Type 1 and the introduction of the Volkswagen brand. Volkswagen initially slated production for the late 1930s, but the outbreak of war in 1939 meant that production was delayed until the war had ended. The car was originally called the Volkswagen Type 1 and marketed simply as the Volkswagen. It was not until 1968 that it was officially named the "Beetle".
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Car platform in the context of Multi-purpose vehicle
Minivan (sometimes called simply a van) is a car classification for vehicles designed to transport passengers in the rear seating row(s), with reconfigurable seats in two or three rows. The equivalent classification in Europe is MPV (multi-purpose vehicle), people carrier, or M-segment.
Compared with a full-size van, most minivans are based on a passenger car platform and have a lower body. Early models, such as the Ford Aerostar and Chevrolet Astro, utilized a compact pickup truck platform.