After the war and right up to the present day, many hundreds of companies, hobbyists and designers around the world have built countless special vehicles based on a Volkswagen chassis. Some were adventurous, others breathtakingly beautiful, including coupés, convertibles, pickups and buggies. After 1945, most cars were developed out of necessity, as the market had been bombed out of existence. Later, car manufacturers let their imaginations run wild. In addition to the official production in Wolfsburg, a separate branch of the industry developed around fitting new or good used chassis with custom bodies. Nordhoff refused to supply car manufacturers with chassis from the assembly line. He even prohibited VW dealers from supplying VW Beetles to coachbuilders. All these efforts could not prevent a diverse range of vehicles based on Volkswagen and Porsche technology from appearing almost everywhere in the world.

While in the 1950s the focus was on reconstruction, in the 1960s and 1970s the vehicle was increasingly at the service of leisure activities. The world was becoming more colourful, and not just because of the hippie movement.

During the 1980s it became increasingly difficult to get a home-built vehicle on the road. As time went on, stricter road traffic regulations made it almost impossible to get a homebuilt vehicle type-approved.