VW wants its bangers on menu

COMING to the UK soon - Volkswurst. German carmaker Volkswagen is applying to the EU for permission to sell its famous bangers - not the driveable kind - in branches throughout Europe.

The best of their wurst rolls off a production line at the VW plant at Wolfsburg. This year the company butcher's shop will make 1.5m currywursts, a traditional sausage spiced with curry powder and tangy sauce.

This is three times the number of cars that roll out annually from the plant, and evidence of Germany's undying love affair with processed meat.

'Currywurst is VW's biggest product made in Wolfsburg,' said Klaus Labersweiler, head of the company's meat department. The product goes to company cafeterias across Europe and will soon be branching out to workers in the UK, where the German car giant has a headquarters at Milton Keynes controlling sourcing, marketing and distribution here.

Currywurst is the food of night-owls in need of protein on the way home and of Saturday-afternoon shoppers. It appeals to Germans of all classes and is sold by the thousands of yards every day in tens of thousands of outlets from airports to street corners.

But technicians at VW - motto: Vorsprung durch Technik, or leading through technology - are not letting the wurst rest on its laurels. In development are currywurst ragouts, a twosausage microwaveable package to be delivered via vending machine, and even a currywurst spread for breakfast tables.

Currently only German employees and visitors to Autostadt, VW's theme park for car fans, are offered the sausages. Next year the butcher's shop is applying for EU permission to export them to branches in the UK, Spain and Belgium.

Certainly there are no moves to outsource sausage production. Their manufacture on company premises started before the Second World War when housing, recreation and gardens were supplied to workers making Hitler's 'People's Car'.

After the war the British Army kept the sausage machine in operation - and now they are made daily to a secret recipe for shipping throughout Germany. The plant gets through two tons of pork, a quarter of a ton of fat and hundreds of pounds of spices a week.

'We regularly hear from chain stores who want to sell our wurst,' said VW corporate chief Nils Potthast. 'But there are no plans to do so. I am not sure, from a corporate image standpoint, if it would make sense to have the VW logo on a meat product.'