Ben Pon, Sr.

Ben Pon senior (* 1904, † 1968) was a Dutch businessman whose company Pon's Automobielhandel in 1947, the first was abroad, the exported vehicles of the German Volkswagen Group to foreign countries after the Second World War.

Life

Since 1898, Ben's father Mijndert Pon had a shop with sewing machines, household items and tobacco products on Arnhemseweg in Amersfoort, Holland, later Opel bicycles and bicycles came with an auxiliary motor to it, and in 1920 sold Pon also Opel and Ford automobiles as well as Continental tires. 1931 made ​​the brothers Ben and Wijnand Pon from the company to Pon's Automobielhandel.

Relationship with Volkswagen

On August 8, 1947 was Volkswagen Pon general importer for the Netherlands and got in the course of 1947 51 VW Bug from Wolfsburg. 1948, the company was also an importer of Porsche cars.

Ben Pon senior gave a drawn design the decisive impetus to the development of the VW bus, that is considered one of the fathers of the VW Type 2 " Bulli ".

In 1949 the first Beetle was shipped to America ( to 1960 should be followed by a half-million, two years later, there were one million Beetles ). It is certain that Ben Pon was not negligible contributed to this success was the first exporter to the United States via the Netherlands; is unoccupied, that he was actually the first Beetles sold in the U.S., because he could not pay his hotel bill after he was not successful at finding a distributor, as described in The Beetle driver.

In 1971 the dealer division of the company was spun off and since then performed as Pon Dealer. After 1974, Audi also has a Pon - partner and the company continued to grow, 1980, Pon Holdings was launched, which is a family company with about 9,000 employees today.

One of Ben Pons sons is former racing driver Ben Pon junior.