Amid a tense trade situation and a slowing EV adoption curve, don’t be surprised if automakers change their product plans for the near future. More hybrids, different pricing, reduced model selection … if all of these things are on the table, why not also sausages? In an amusing moment of diversification, Volkswagen is turning its famed currywurst into microwave meals. They’re only officially slated for sale and consumption in Germany for now, but could you imagine if we got it in North America?
In case you aren’t familiar with currywurst, it’s Germany’s chief contribution to fast food, the people’s food of the modern era. Bockwurst, ketchup, curry powder, either on fries or over a bun, simple as. Claimed to be invented in 1949 by Herta Heuwer, albeit without ketchup at the time, it’s become a phenomenon, with an estimated 800 million servings enjoyed every year in Germany. One of the biggest players in the game? Volkswagen. Yep, the car manufacturer.
The Golf is one of the most popular cars in history, but as a popular product, it has nothing on the currybockwurst sausages produced by Volkswagen in Wolfsburg every year—around seven million of the things. Known by part number 199 398 500 A, this office-canteen-specialty-turned-mass-marketed food is holy stuff for Volkswagen fans abroad, and a popular meal within Germany when paired with Volkswagen’s special ketchup.
Speaking of the ketchup, Volkswagen took the bold step of giving away a limited quantity of it in America last year, in collaboration with renowned VW fanatic Jamie Orr. It sold out 90 minutes after our article on it went live. Imagine if the last run of manual Golf Rs was snapped up that quickly, or the First Edition ID.Buzz. With popularity like that, it makes sense for Volkswagen to expand availability of its famous food, and Germany is getting an even easier way to enjoy it.
Starting next month, heat-and-serve Volkswagen currywurst is launching in select supermarkets in Northern and Eastern Germany, with nationwide availability on the docket after that. Admittedly, there is one big adaptation for this format: ditching the traditional curry powder by incorporating it into the sauce. That’s a bit of a shame, but considering Volkswagen has actual food scientists on the project, don’t be surprised if it tastes exactly the same. You will need to provide your own fries and/or bun, but otherwise, it’s the car brand’s iconic meal through and through.
There’s no word yet on whether or not Volkswagen would consider expanding heat-and-serve currywurst outside of Germany, but I can’t help but get the sense that this is exactly the product VW needs for its U.S. portfolio. Something cheaper and easier to chew on than a Jetta that really establishes brand presence in everyday people’s homes. The wildest part? Volkswagen technically can do currywurst in America, it’s just a matter of scale. As the National Post reported in 2018, “According to Volkswagen, when the company has served currywurst in the U.S. in the past, “it has flown the butchers into the country and replicated the production line with local ingredients.” Time to find some extra space at the Chattanooga plant, I reckon.
Top graphic image: Volkswagen
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
Can someone tell me how these sausages make it from VW to the people who eat them?
I can see that they apparently manufacture them, and I guess they serve them in the factory cafeteria. Is the factory dining hall consumption the only way to get these? Do they sell them to restaurants and grocery stores also?
Oh man. I wish we could get those in the US. I ate that every Tuesday for 4 years!!
Where did you get it?
I had them when I worked at Bentley. One day a year the canteen would sell them at lunchtime. They were a good novelty.
“Germany’s chief contribution to fast food”
Döner Kebab would like to have a word! Currywurst is not even the number 1 german fast food in germany.
“It was the best of times, it was the wurst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair ”
As someone who considers condiments an abomination, the thought of ketchup on these makes my stomach churn.
But I’ll gladly try a ketchup free variant!
How would you know if you haven’t tried currywurst in Germany, eh?
I’ve been lucky enough to eat the currywurst inside the VW Wolfsburg Kantine. It’s definitely good, but it’s more interesting for the novelty that the ketchup and the sausages have a VW logo more than anything else.
I’d still buy this if I could, though.
I’d love to be able to buy this. I’m not a vegetarian (though I’m very pro-vegetable) and I’m a fan of both snausages and of curry, so I expect that I’d enjoy it. Shame there aren’t any really decent microwave fries to go with it though (at least not IME).
They sell them at our annual Christmas village here in the US and they’re a perfectly fine alternative to bratwurst and knackwurst. You could see them as a German alternative to Detroit’s Coney Islands, where the chili sauce is flavored with a healthy dose of cumin and ground beef heart.
I had the currywurst at the Munich BMW museum and just wasn’t very impressed, same with all the other touristy German food I had on the trip. (Think large, overly processed sausages undesirably close in flavor and texture to bland hot dogs)
I’ll visit the VW and Porsche museums some day but I feel like any hype for their food will be met with equal disappointment.
The Porsche Museum is actually pretty good. Agree on the sausage
The BMW museum itself is -fantastic-, highly recommend visiting if one has the opportunity.
Hot dogs, also known as frankfurters?
I have previously tried to order currywurst by part number from my local dealer with no luck. Hopefully this iteration makes it to our shores
I had a food science major friend in college and hearing her talk about what they were doing was fascinating. Many facets to all that.
Had the chance to have the VW currywurst at Autostadt last year; however nothing beats original Berliner currywurst from an Imbiss…
Sorry hot dogs already exist here. And if you go sausage we have cheddarwurst sausage cheese in the sausage. Try andoullin sausage, boudan sausage, hot Italian sausage, hell the king of sausage kielbasa sorry German sausage is a loser.because every thing else tastes better on a pizza
None of those things are currywurst though.
Linguiça rules. There was a big migration of Portuguese dairy farmers here in the mid 20th century so all the grocery stores have linguiça sales. A college roommate who grew up in New Bedford was completely flux when he saw all the linguiça..
In the closest town, the joke is that everybody is named Silva, but none of them are related.
Anyway, linguiça and andouille put all those northern European sausages to shame. Maybe Adamastor can put a part number on a sausage.
Cajun andouille, not that French tripe stuff.
Wurst possible timing –
R &T headline this week: 4 former VW execs found guilty of fraud in Dieselgate!
Guardian headline this week: Dieselgate emissions killed as many as 16,000 in UK !
Autopian headline: New VW sausage just dropped!
Has anyone considered the extra emissions were caused by sausage and not cheating?
Shame the German judicial system hasn’t gone after the tyrannic politicians who forced the Germans to get Covid-19 shots through restrictive 2G measures, mandatory shots for the government and military employees, useless masks (they don’t work due to Foege effect), and such.
Before you blather about the Covid-19 shots, remember our federal health minister, Dr Karl Lauterbach, admitted on 7 July 2022 at the federal parliament that the Covid-19 shots don’t work in preventing the Covid-19 virus. Of course, the mainstream media maintained the radio silence on this revelation. Additionally, the unredacted transcripts of meetings with the health officials and politicians at RKI were leaked to the public last year. What a clusterfuck of politically motivated mandates that did nothing but made the pandemic worse.
The Foegen effect (not Foege) is a fringe theory. It relies on conclusions that are flawed when held up to scrutiny. There is much more evidence that suggests, and even definitively proves, that masks do work in lessening the chance that you will contract a viral illness. Masks have been used for centuries to lessen the chance of contracting an illness. This was all well understood before Covid-19 ever existed. Now, if you wear a mask incorrectly, is there a chance it won’t work, and may even exacerbate your chances of contracting illness? Sure. The point is you have to wear your mask the right way, not that you shouldn’t wear it at all.
As for the vaccines not preventing the virus…uh, yeah. No vaccine completely prevents infection. What vaccines actually do is drastically lessen your chances of contracting the virus, and if you do catch it, your illness will not be as severe as it would have been had you not gotten the vaccine. No one who knows the first thing about vaccines will ever say that they’re 100% effective. Almost nothing in this world is 100% effective. Claiming that vaccines are useless because they’re not 100% effective is like saying you shouldn’t bother wearing a seatbelt because some people who wear them still die in car crashes. That’s not the point—the point is fewer people will die, not that absolutely no one will. Making something 100% safe is almost impossible.
No, the politicians KNEW those Covid-19 shots don’t work from the start due to the deeply flawed trials (there are many reports out there). The vaccine trials are usually seven to fifteen years before they are approved. How long did it take to create the Covid-19 “vaccine” this time? Less than a year. And unproven technology called mRNA, which was essentially a gene therapy that failed many times in the past.
Why is it all of the sudden so many manufacturers come up with unproven mRNA technology? That is extremely unprecedent and why only mRNA technology?
If you have been following Reiner Fuellmilch, you’d see how the whole Covid-19 pandemic and shots are horrendous hoax ever perpetuated onto the humanity. He was arrested because he made lot of politicians, pharmaceutical industries, doctors, medical researchers, and such very uncomfortable about their roles.
Why were lot of people arrested for speaking up against the pandemic and Covid-19 shots? Why are the politicians wanting the truth about them stonewalled many times, especially in Europe? Why staggering amount of censorship? Why did Ursula von der Leyenn, the EU president, destroy the communication with Pfizer’s CEO regarding €39 billion contract to supply the Covid-19 shots? The court found her guilty for violating the EU rule on transparency and threatened her with arrest if she would not provide the SMS conversations and fully unredacted contract between EU and Pfizer.
Your analogue with the car seat belt is very poor because the car seat belt doesn’t use the chemicals as in the “vaccine” that have proven to cause harm to the patient. The seat belts have proven many times to be effective in protecting the occupants from the injury in the collisions. Of course, the design plays a significant role: lap seat belt is ineffective than three-point shoulder and lap seat belt.
National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act passed in 1986 protects the vaccine manufacturers from the indemnity. Prior to 1986, the vaccine schedule was about six to eight shots before the age of six. Today, how many? At least seventy. This is like in your analogue fitting the vehicles with seventy seat belts. Additionally, those “vaccines” contain adjuvents made from aluminium salts and Thimerosal made from mercury: those are what cause inflammations and trigger the immunity response. Autism was very rare when I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, it’s very common. There are many documentary films such as Vaxxed exposing the cover-up and danger of those chemicals in the “vaccine”.
Need I go on? I will stop here because I am not going to waste my time with you and those people who are too brainwashed to see the truth.
Right, we’re the ones who are brainwashed. You keep telling yourself that, buddy.
I thought that VW stopped making their own currywurst/bockwurst years ago?
It was announced they were stopping it back in 2021 I think but it does seem to still be going.
This seams to always trigger my check stomach light.
We had really good currywurst from a stand at the Portland Swap Meet in April, but these guys had never heard of Volkswagen Currywurst. They used home made sauce anyway. Immigration patterns mean you can still get good German food in Oregon.
I parked next to a pretty decent condition Toyota Echo today. I’ve been spending too much time here, because I was pretty excited. “This ole gal is at least 20 years old and probably cost under $11k new!”
I believe aldis sells it in Germany. Aldis, trader Joe’s, and lidl should carry it in the US. The general population would loose its mind. VW is slowly becoming a food company just like IKEA. Maybe there is a cross marketing opportunity there. Or maybe they should outfit some vans as food trucks to go to dealers and drumb up test drive and sale events.
Since Trader Joe’s is owned by Aldi it would be a natural!
For sure, Aldi North and US Aldi’s is Aldi South. You can’t tell trader Joe’s people that though
Wow really? Jesus… hard to believe a company that can run a well managed, clean store like TJs can also run the beat up, crappy, smelly death-holes that are Aldis.
You know German cuisine is… less than stellar when their national dish is doner kebab.
Where did you get that information?! in a quick search i found two things: one is Sauerbraten, the other is Germany have a variety of national dishes for different regions.
Beside, German cuisine is underrated.
There’s a German restaurant I like in Manhattan that just plops down a gravy boat of goose fat on every table. I think just about everything is edible if you pour enough goose fat on it.
Obligatory: Looks good, but smells like crayons.
Well, Aldi is German, so…
So is Trader Joe’s!
I simply would not trust a company with VW’s reputation for quality to produce something I eat.
Their initial quality’s really good though. I would definitely recommend buying this one new rather than off-lease.
Yeah, I definitely don’t recommend buying used sausage.
Thanks for the laugh. My mind went weird places with that one
Certified Pre-Owned does not help resale value either.
The instructions are super easy, too.
Instructions unclear. I tried to add off-brand curry ketchup. VW told me to put my affairs in order right away.
You just came up with a new way to lose the 10mm socket.
I need this to come here. Or maybe I need it not to, because I do not have the self-control required to eat it in moderation. Either way, this could be awesome for the people who get to have it.