About 300 were built prior to WW2. Small batches but the design was mostly finished, production was halted because of WW2 and then the Beetle (not Beatle, that's a kind of musician ;)) platform was repurposed to become the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_K%C3%BCbelwagen of which 50K+ were made.

John, Paul, George and Ringo were mostly conceived in the early 40’s