PILOT was founded in 1932 by Henning Cortsen. In the pre WWII years, they mainly produced lead ship models, airplanes, trams, trains and figures. Due to shortage of lead in the war era (needed for the weapons industry) PILOT switched to using zinc. In the early 1950's PILOT started to make plastic models (using WIKING molds and adapting them) in 1/87 scale. Henning Cortsen and WIKING founder Friedrich Peltzer were close friends and both companies interchanged molds regularly. In the early 1950's LEGO used to be the distributor for PILOT. The quality of the plastic used by PILOT was poor and often causes a distortion of the bodies. The early production cars had brass colored wheels and later silver colored wheels were applied.
In the mid 1950's, an Oval Window Beetle was introduced. The production of these 1/87 scale plastic models stopped in the early 1960s, around that time both WIKING and LEGO had surpassed PILOT in terms of quality and details. In 1974 the PILOT company was closed after the death of Henning Cortsen.
The VW Split Window features a plastic body with solid windows and details of the front and rear hood, doors, headlights and taillights. No chassis and metal wheels with axles attached to the body. License plate may or may not be painted black. No markings. The PILOT V2 is a slightly smaller version of the PILOT V1 (V1 marked with PILOT inside the roof).
The PILOT VW is basically a scaled down copy of the WIKING Split VW Small Scale V2.
