Wolfsburg is literally the town that VW built. Its origins go back to an industrial colony created to house workers at a new Volkswagen production facility. It was christened with the unwieldy name of "City of the Strength Through Joy Car," the original name of the auto that would later be known as the Volkswagen Beetle.

"Strength Through Joy" was the name of the National Socialist leisure organization.

Although after World War Two the town carried the stigma of its Nazi founders and lay largely in rubble, once the VW conveyor belts began turning again, the town, now renamed Wolfsburg after a 14th-century castle there, began to thrive.