Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Volkswagen has ranked as the world's second-best selling automaker for three years running, trailing only Toyota with between 8.2 million and 9.3 million vehicles sold each year between 2020 and 2022. The Volkswagen group now includes 10 European brands including Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, and Ducati. However, the company almost didn't survive World War II. The auto group got its start and name from Adolf Hitler in May of 1937. He wanted a "people's car" and enlisted Ferdinand Porsche to design the brand's first model. In 1938, Hitler established the city of Stadt des KdF-Wagens ("City of the KdF Wagon"), now called Wolfsburg, which was home to the Volkswagen factory there.
During the war, the factory was used to make bombs and military vehicles. When the plant was captured by Allied forces in April of 1945, nearly 8,000 forced laborers were freed. The damaged factory and city were then handed over to the British after U.S. troops withdrew following Hitler's suicide and Germany's surrender.
British Maj. Ivan Hirst took command of the factory and convinced his superiors that Vollkswagens would work well as light transport. The British Army then responded with an order of 20,000 vehicles — including 1,785 Type Is — in 1945.
The Type I was the car eventually dubbed the Beetle. It would become the most-produced model in automotive history, surpassing the Ford Model T in 1972. According to Autoweek, the Brits found the Type I obnoxious and "quite unattractive to the average motorcar buyer." They even tried to give Volkswagen away to Ford, but Ford's board chairman Ernest Breech declined, saying, "I don't think what we're being offered here is worth a damn!"
[...] It wasn't until four years after the war's end that the first Type I Beetle made its way to North America, thanks to Dutch importer Ben Pon. He brought the first Beetles across the Atlantic in January of 1949 and drove one of them fruitlessly up and down the Eastern Seaboard, looking for a buyer, eventually selling it for $800 to help pay off a hotel bill. By the year's end, however, he had only sold two of the vehicles that reporters dubbed "Hitler's car," which Pon tried to re-label as the "Victory Wagon."
Pon returned to Europe, and importer Max Hoffman stepped in as the first official stateside Volkswagen dealer. Hoffman earned the exclusive right to sell Volkswagens east of the Mississippi, and by 1960 he had placed 300,000 American buyers behind their wheels.
[...] Disney took advantage of the Beetle's popularity and unique style, making it the star of the 1969 film "Herbie the Love Bug," along with several movie sequels and a 1982 television series.
According to the Disney website D23, writer and producer Bill Walsh conducted a multi-car audition to select the right car to star as Herbie. "As the employees passed by on their way to lunch," Walsh said, "they looked at the little cars, kicked the tires, and turned the steering wheels. But everybody who went by patted the Volkswagen. The VW had a personality of its own that reached out and embraced people."
[...] By 1974, Volkswagen had moved production of the Beetle from Wolfsburg to its new plants in Mexico and Brazil, and, beginning in 1977, only sold the Type I Beetle in the U.S. in convertible form. Throughout the 1970s, the Type I gradually grew more powerful and driver-friendly, getting a larger windshield, automatic transmission, and electronic fuel injection.
Volkswagen introduced the New Beetle in 1998, with the familiar rounded shape but proper 20th-century features like a sunroof, air bags, and a turbocharger. While the early New Beetles had these modern features, VW tried to maintain the link to the car's hippie roots by including a flower vase as a dealer accessory. Car and Driver clocked the 1999 New Beetle as capable of going from zero to 60 in 7.3 seconds.
The last Type I came off the assembly line in Mexico in 2003, and the new version of the Beetle saw several updates and revisions before it was finally dropped for good in 2019.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday December 31, @01:28AM (7 children)
I remember my mom saying she had to plug a little heater in (i guess the cigarette lighter?) to keep it warm in our Canadian winter.
I remember the Herbie movies, and that made me think of the Kurt Russel movies: Computer who wore tennis shoes, Now you see him....
Of course, there's The Thing....
Let the rabbit hole go down and down and down.....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday December 31, @01:56AM (6 children)
If memory serves that was typical. They were air cooled engines in the back of the car hence bring your own heater.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday December 31, @03:20AM (5 children)
The VWs had exhaust-to-air heat exchangers that snuggled around the exhaust manifolds to transfer heat to the passenger compartment. When the engine was up to operating temperature, these could easily heat the entire vehicle *except* our fine german friends neglected to include blowers in the system. That meant, in practice, a very small amount of ankle-roasting hot air coming out of the floor vents and nothing else. That tiny 2x3 inch area was hot enough to melt your shoe rubber, no other part of the vehicle shared that heat. Aftermarket electrical blowers addressed this shortcoming, but I never had one. :(
The other problem was these heater boxes were controlled by a steel cable in a steel housing that would rust into a solid mass. Most vw specialty shops had long flexible drill bits they'd shove down through the tubes to grind the rust out, then you could pull the broken cable bits to make room for a new cable. Despite ludicrous amounts of grease, these lasted about 3 years and locked back up again.
I enjoyed working on this car very much. It was the only car where I've been able to lift the engine in and out by myself without a hoist, the first clutch I ever put in, the first mountain I ever crashed into, and the reason I got a job at an auto parts store. That's a good story. It was just after Christmas, and I'd received a pair of fluffy bunny slippers that year. I was flush with Christmas cash and went to Advance Auto Parts to buy the penultimate of luxuries, an electric windshield washer pump to replace the OEM contrivance that used air pressure from the SPARE TIRE to power the system. I seem to recall that on the same trip I carried the rear hood in to make sure I got the right bolts to reassemble it properly (replacing the probably-not-OEM zip ties). Anyway, for these blissfully extravagant purchases, I did not notice I was wearing my new fluffy bunny slippers. This made the manager laugh, I interviewed on the spot, took an application home, and started two weeks later. It was a lovely time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31, @04:16AM (1 child)
> .. these lasted about 3 years and locked back up again.
Our family Beetle was used in a high road salt area. I don't think that the heater boxes around the exhaust lasted long enough that we ever worried about the control cables rusting up...
Early 1970s story: A friend had just finished making a different old Beetle road-worthy and I was headed off to visit friends about 400 miles away on the interstate. My friend thought it would be fun to go too, and offered his car for the trip. We made it about 50 miles down the freeway, having fun pulling out behind trucks that were going faster than we could go--drafting would help us go a bit faster. And then the death knock, lost a rod bearing. Clattered our way into a rest area. My friend called his sister to come with a tow strap to get him and the car back home.
While waiting for her to show up, we dropped the engine right there in the parking lot, on to a pile of scrap cardboard to avoid banging it on the pavement. A couple of truck drivers wandered by and helped us lift the rear of the car so we could slide the engine out from under the bodywork. When his sister arrived, the engine went in the back of the station wagon, all ready for the rebuild to start once they got home. I hitchhiked on to my destination.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday December 31, @10:58AM
An acquaintance of mine, best described as a semi-sane Scottish engineer, had one. He claimed to be able to tune it to idle at one rev per second. He thought the engineering was rather good.
I also know someone who holidayed as part of a family of five in a Beetle, pulling a caravan. Apparently people would take photographs of the combination.
The air-cooled engines trigger a particular form of synæsthesia for me: for some weird reason, it sounds 'sweet'. I don't get synæsthesia for other things, and the sound of the VW Beetle engine is the only thing that I have found that triggers that particular sensation.
And to round off, the VW variant (or Type 3) is a rear-engined estate car/station wagon, which was always fun for confusing people. The engine was slung behind the rear-axle, with a load carrying bay above it - so you'd load it up, and helpers would thing the car was 'full', then you would open the bonnet/hood and fill that space too, and those not in the know would wonder where the engine was.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday January 01, @02:11AM (2 children)
My aunt had a 1960 Beetle. It once got 50mpg on a road trip, (I was along, I saw the numbers. Real.) After it was retired from highway duty, she used it to chase cows on the ranch.
I never owned one, but I remember when they were everywhere. Now they're a stick-your-head-out-the-window event. I think I've seen ONE in the past ten years.
What was the name of the aftermarket repair manual, that showed how to fix pretty much everything with pliers and baling wire?
[Also, wonderful story.]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Tuesday January 02, @04:04AM (1 child)
Chilton?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday January 02, @04:19AM
Doesn't sound right. This had a title that sort of echoed "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and was literally how to fix a VW Bug with whatever you had to hand. Friend had a copy and I remember when he got stranded somewhere and wound up fixing what ailed it with a scrap length of bailing wire plucked from the nearest fence. (Some linkage that fell apart and was really only a long piece of wire, if you knew where to feed it through.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Sunday December 31, @01:47AM
In high school (70s) I worked on engines a lot. A friend asked if I'd help him with his bug one weekend, I agreed. Kinda surprised to see 2 other guys show up, but whatev. We get into a pickup, drive about a mile, and Ray says "this guy sold me the engine". We had the engine halfway out before I realized we were stealing it.
I was rather naive back then. Smart, but much too trusting.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31, @02:00AM (1 child)
My memory of the car is that it was the loud little beast driven by our odd neighbors. They had children who were old enough to be hippies, got caught up in drugs, etc. and of course drive the loud Beetle which I could hear pulling in to their driveway even though my bedroom faced the back yard. It must have been considerably louder for my parents and sister, but they didn't seem to mind... too much. The oldest daughter, IIRC, got caught up in the first wave of drugs and/or out of wedlock births that defined the lifestyle for some. The younger daughter seemed OK. Almost everybody else on the block drove American sedans. The 3 boys across the street worked on them with their dad, and I always envied that. My Dad never did his own wrenching, and we had more refined late model sedans whereas the 3 boys fixed up used "muscle cars". They sounded so much better then the VW to me--musical throaty growl. I look back on it now and just think of the pollution though. No emission control, and one time they had a car that literally blew smoke rings until they got it fixed, like maybe after a month.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday December 31, @04:14PM
My dad went to Queens University for Civil Engineering: one of the topics he studied was it cheaper to heat a house or insulate. At that time, it was just cheaper to heat than insulate.
Cheaper to pollute. :/
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31, @04:29AM
Well known automotive writer Karl Ludvigsen's "Battle for the Beetle" (2000) tells quite a different version of the story than described in tfa. Blurb here, https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Beetle-Karl-Ludvigsen/dp/0837616956/ref=sr_1_14 [amazon.com] Since Ludvigsen went into multiple archives for original sources I'm somewhat more inclined to believe his version...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 31, @05:21AM
We were always trading horses, and cars, in my high school days. We swapped several Beetles in and out, somehow never kept one long enough to get the paperwork done for tags. Few even got insurance on them. We would get a junker, invest a few dollars in it, drive it around off road, abuse it some, then swap it for something more valuable to us. While a VW was certainly not a Jeep, they got around off road surprisingly well.
I get a little nostalgic for those old Beetle cars from time to time, until I remember that we spent more time working on them, than driving them. Maybe if I had owned one that wasn't a beater, the memories would be better. I certainly never owned one that I was willing to drive 1000 miles at highway speeds. We always opted for something bigger, heavier, and more comfortable, even if it was a farm truck.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday January 01, @08:39AM
The VW Beetle isn't exactly what people have in mind when they think of German invasion...
Krautrock [wikipedia.org] is.