Why did the inventor of the beetle volkswagen designed its engine to be located in front of the vehicle?

ooooooo- this one's gonna hurt! the original VW was NOT in any way shape or form desinged by Adolf Hitler. this car wes desinged entirely by Mr. Porsche (pronounced "poor-sha"). Ferry Porsche then went to the German Gov't. (under Adolf Hitler) and asked for financing to bring this to reality. at that point in time, the average person in Europe could not afford a car- it would be like only having Bentleys and Porsches ;) as the available cars today- no Fiats or the like (remember this is pre-ww2 Europe), and hence the name Volks-Wagen ("People's Car"). the German Gov't. (under the direction of Hitler) issued coupon books to make payments *toward* getting a new VW. not like the "get-the-car-now-pay-later" we see today). this money was then used to build up the Nazi war machine and the folks that payed money were out of it. the car wasn't built in high production until after the war and the factory (which had been bombed repeatedly) was brought back to life under the hand of a British Army officer (i don't have time to google his name right now). ok, so the reason for the rear-engine rear-drive was for traction (engine weight over the drive wheels like front drivers today) and Ferry Porsche had been designing his race cars like this for better weight distribution. flash to the New Beetle (BTW- the "old Beetle" was never called that until it came to the US market and it was still only a nickname bestowed on it by owners, never the factory). the New Beetle is built on an existing platform (the same as the Golf and Jetta 4 and the Audi TT) and it would have been far too difficult and far too expensive to engineer a rear engine-rear drive on this platform. the good news is it is a front engine-front driver and you get the same sort of traction out this config

No, the engine is not in the front, but in the back of the car.

Uhh, the engine is in the back.