The Volkswagen Sausage
Image by Karl Allen Lugmayer from Pixabay
What parts do you think Volkswagen produces the most at their factories?
Fuel pumps? Wiper blades? Maybe throttle bodies for their cars?
No, it’s sausages!
The number one part produced by Volkswagen factories is sausages! Yes, you read that right. Sausages, or 'currywurst' to be exact. Volkswagen factories produce somewhere along the lines of 6.8 million of these sausages every year at their factories. They're even assigned their own Volkswagen Original Part number: 199 398 500 A.
Looking at the production volumes, Volkswagen clearly makes more sausages than they do cars! But what exactly is a 'currywurst' Currywurst is a traditional German fast food that's made up of steamed-then-fried pork sausages cut into pieces and eaten with ketchup. Usually, the currywurst is also served with a side dish like french fries or something similar.
The History of the Volkswagen Currywurst
All of this started in 1973 at Volkswagen's Wolfsburg plant. The story goes that this plant was so remote that they had to prepare their own food for factory workers. At first, the Wolfsburg plant got their animals supplied by a farm also owned by Volkswagen. Workers at the plant would then butcher the animals themselves before preparing the sausages, all on-site. Later, they started buying from local farms in the area instead, directly contributing to the local economy much more.
At the Wolfsburg plant, the sausage is sold in its 17 staff canteens. It is usually accompanied by ketchup, fries, and even a currywurst soup. At the 45th anniversary of the Volkswagen Currywurst, they also created currywurst pizzas and burgers! To top it all off, Volkswagen also makes utensils that are sold to be used to eat these food items. Funnily enough, each and every one of these items is given a part number just like any other Volkswagen car part, too.
Beyond the Wolfsburg plant, the Volkswagen currywurst is also available in six other Volkswagen plants. Outside of Volkswagen factories, the currywurst does enjoy limited distribution to some supermarkets and football stadiums. They're also offered as gifts to Volkswagen's customers. Imagine going into a dealer to get a new VW and being offered sausages as a free gift!
Internationally, the Volkswagen Currywurst is sold in 11 other countries, with future plans of exporting them to Singapore as well. Sadly, this Volkswagen product isn’t yet available in Malaysia.
Check out this video of Richard Hammond (of Top Gear fame) visiting the Wolfsburg plant in Germany!
What's In The Volkswagen Currywurst?
The sausage is mostly made from pork (which makes it non-halal, sadly). Typical German bratwursts have a fat content of 35%. Still, the Volkswagen Currywurst only has about 20% fat, making it a much leaner sausage. Volkswagen claims that the sausages have no additives like MSG, protein powder, phosphates or anything like that. After the meat is ground up, the pork is then mixed with a secret Volkswagen recipe of spices and then stuffed into sausage skins. The sausage skins are then branded with the words Volkswagen Originalteil (meaning 'Volkswagen Original Part') and then packed together in packets of five sausages.
The sausages are available in two sizes. The first is about 13 cm long, while the other is almost double the size at roughly 25 cm in length.
All of these food items are prepared by a 30-strong team of Volkswagen employees at the Wolfsburg plant. Even though they work for Volkswagen, the production lines they work on are for food preparation, not for the assembly of cars.
So there you have it. A little-known secret of the motoring world and how Volkswagen’s top-selling product is a sausage, and not even a car part at all!