About

Volkswagen "Das Auto" Parodies are a series of remix videos parodying the Volkswagen Ad slogan "Das Auto" (which means 'The Car' in German), with Volkswagen cars breaking, smoking, having issues, exploding, crashing, doing silly things, etc. The earliest videos began to appear around 2015, and the meme gained renewed popularity in 2021. Videos of the meme became popular on YouTube and TikTok.

Origin

Volkswagen began using the slogan "Das Auto" in their commercials starting in 2007,^[1] as shown with the commercial below:

Volkswagen discontinued using the slogan "Das Auto" in the mid 2010s due to their 2015 Emission Scandal (also known as DieselGate). This event inspired people to create parody videos with the "Das Auto" slogan at the end. For example, on September 26th, 2015, YouTuber Marius Radu posted a parody that gained over 123,000 views in seven years (shown below).

Spread

On October 8th, 2016,YouTuber Diram290 posted an early "Das Auto" meme, gaining over 50,000 views in six years (shown below, left). On October 7, 2020, a YouTube user named Szymon Damps posted a video of a Volkswagen T3 crash test edited with the "Das Auto" slogan appearing at the end. It was briefly featured on YouTube's home page at the time, making it go viral. The video has over 700,000 views.

In 2021, the meme gained renewed popularity as various users on YouTube and TikTok began making more "Das Auto" parodies, with some users combining multiple videos into compilations. On August 16th, YouTuber MasterMemes posted a compilation that gained over 397,000 views in one year (shown below, left). On December 21st, YouTuber Good Films posted a compilation that gained over 20,000 views in five months (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References