It’s true that the Ford Company was offered the Volkswagen plant for free after World War II, but turned it down.

The occupying British army offered the Volkswagen factory and car model first to British firms and then to the Ford Motor Company.

They all turned it down.

Company president Henry Ford II wanted to make big, shiny sedans and took the advice of his CEO, Ernest Breech, who told him, “Mr. Ford, I don’t think what we are being offered here is worth a damn.”