Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I guess I should
Speaker 2: say beep beep and welcome to the podcast. This is
Speaker 2: stuff you should know. It's a love bug of podcasts,
Speaker 2: and the reason why is because it features Charles W. Chuck,
Speaker 2: Wayne Chuck, Tran Bryet.
Speaker 1: Is it a reference to my first car or just
Speaker 1: me just you you love bug? Oh? Okay, I got you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Jerry's a love bug too, but much more insect.
Speaker 1: Like this was my first car.
Speaker 2: I know. Is that why you selected this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I've always had a soft spot for the
Speaker 1: old VW Beetle. I had a sixty eight that my
Speaker 1: parents bought new in nineteen sixty eight, which, as we'll see,
Speaker 1: was the year they boomed in the States.
Speaker 2: Know, I do know that. Yes, I didn't know if
Speaker 2: there was more to your story.
Speaker 1: No, No, I thought, no, I mean, I'm continuing my story,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I just thought that you might react or something.
Speaker 1: It's fine. Then I later had a seventy five super
Speaker 1: Beetle Liar, and then I had a square back, a
Speaker 1: Type three square back I think it was a seventy
Speaker 1: five as well, and that was actually my favorite of
Speaker 1: them all.
Speaker 2: But I'm not familiar with that last one.
Speaker 1: You'd recognize it. It was sort of a it was it
Speaker 1: was their version of a station wagon.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're talking about the thing.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, thing wasn't a station wagon at all.
Speaker 2: No, I've never seen a Beatle station wagon in my life. Dude.
Speaker 1: Okay, Welston, you picture.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, that's cool. I guess it was roomy trunk wise.
Speaker 1: Oh no, not at all. It was you know about it.
Speaker 1: It was probably in the chassis of a Beatle, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it was big. It wasn't like the
Speaker 1: huge station wagons of its day.
Speaker 2: So it was basically just the the shape of it
Speaker 2: kind of was station wagon esque.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to send a picture right now, buddy.
Speaker 2: Please do. I don't have my phone near me, but
Speaker 2: I'll pretend I saw it. Okay, have you sent it yet?
Speaker 2: Not yet?
Speaker 1: Just say, oh my god, I have seen one of those.
Speaker 2: Okay, tell me when you sent it.
Speaker 1: Well, just continue because it's taking longer than I thought.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have a riddle for you, Charles. Okay, what
Speaker 2: do the foreign words babble? Cosinel Tortuga Subpito, Buba, and
Speaker 2: vo Cheeto all have in common.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, they are all various names in various
Speaker 1: countries of the Volkswagen Beetle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's long and short of it. They have nothing
Speaker 2: else in common except for that. But that's pretty cute.
Speaker 2: All of those names are pretty cute. And the reason
Speaker 2: why is because the VW Beetle is a very cute car,
Speaker 2: which is kind of a strange thing to say. If
Speaker 2: we were to go back to the fifties, old old timey,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, post war American suburban dudes would probably beat
Speaker 2: us up for saying that the Beatle was cute. Yeah,
Speaker 2: say no, it's an ugly car. Everybody knows that, and
Speaker 2: no one thinks that anymore. Everyone loves the Beatle. And
Speaker 2: that's the end of the podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good night, I sent you the picture. I'll see
Speaker 1: you tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Hold on, Oh yeah, I've seen one of those before.
Speaker 2: They're great.
Speaker 1: Well, I look forward to your real and your rear
Speaker 1: response later. But I called mine the Type three. It
Speaker 1: was a Type three square back. But the original name
Speaker 1: of the VW Beatle was a Volkswagen Type one, and
Speaker 1: the Germans themselves kind of renamed it der kefer K
Speaker 1: a umlaut fer, which is Beatle in German. But Volkswagen,
Speaker 1: I mean they kind of just took that name upon
Speaker 1: themselves because people were calling it that already.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they stole it from Dervaulk der.
Speaker 1: Volk, yeah, the people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it was der Volk who came up with
Speaker 2: the name Beatle, like you said, but it was der
Speaker 2: Volk for whom the Beatle was created, Chuck. Which is
Speaker 2: the reason why Volkswagen is called Volkswagen. It means the
Speaker 2: People's car. And that is the basis of the entire
Speaker 2: story of the Beatle. The whole thing was started off
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties, championed by no less than Adolf
Speaker 2: Hitler in Germany, I mean, where else. And the point
Speaker 2: of the car was to create an affordable car that
Speaker 2: the average German family could use on the newly built Audubonds,
Speaker 2: which Kraftwerk famously sung about, and which would also bring
Speaker 2: the German economy out of the slump that it had
Speaker 2: been in during the Weimar Republic. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if you remember or not, but we talked about the
Speaker 2: German hyperinflation many times around this time. In my twenties
Speaker 2: early thirties, and get this. There's a stuff you Should
Speaker 2: Know listener. Dave Kusten sent this to us yesterday. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you saw, but there's a stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know listener named Scott Seligman, and he created a
Speaker 2: like a search tool where you can search keywords and
Speaker 2: it will bring up every Stuff you Should Know episode
Speaker 2: that we mentioned, say the word hyperinflation in so that's
Speaker 2: how I know that it was in our episode on
Speaker 2: currency that we talked about that. So hats off to
Speaker 2: Scott Seligman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can people use that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So the URL is just too cluegy to say
Speaker 2: out loud, so I would encourage people. I think he
Speaker 2: posted it on the Stuff you Should Know subreddit, and
Speaker 2: that would be a good place to go. Get it.
Speaker 1: You should have made one of those little URL shorteners.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's legal to do that to
Speaker 2: someone else's u R l.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. I thought that was just a
Speaker 1: way to send out like, hey, just go to you know,
Speaker 1: keyword syskkeyword dot com or something and it would reader.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, I'm not that sad of each Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: forty nine years old. For PiZZ sake.
Speaker 1: Hey, speaking of that and craft work, that leads me
Speaker 1: around to this. Did you notice that I used craft
Speaker 1: work on your stuff? You should know birthday post?
Speaker 2: No I didn't. I saw that post. Thank you very
Speaker 2: much for super sweet, But no, I didn't notice. What
Speaker 2: was the craft work reference?
Speaker 1: Did you know I had the craftwork song playing to
Speaker 1: the post?
Speaker 2: Oh? I know, yeah, I never have my volume up
Speaker 2: for stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Which one I got you.
Speaker 2: A model? I don't know it would be appropriate.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one it was. I wish it
Speaker 1: was autobunding because I'd really bring this sing full circle.
Speaker 2: It really would. But still the craft work mentioned, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go back and listen to it. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna look at the picture of your your station
Speaker 2: wagon and listen to the kraft work song that you
Speaker 2: posted for my birthday. I appreciate that. Man.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's only a station wagon in the purest
Speaker 1: sense of the word. It's more like a stretched hatchback.
Speaker 2: It's too late, Chuck, you really built it up as
Speaker 2: a station You can't back title now.
Speaker 1: But they also had and you know this is along
Speaker 1: the same lines instead of the actual squared back that
Speaker 1: was oh what did they call it? Not the round
Speaker 1: back or did they the green back? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but they had a similar model, except if it wasn't
Speaker 1: as boxy. It was a little rounded, but it still
Speaker 1: had the hatchback.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm totally lost. Now I know about
Speaker 2: the Beatle, but that's about it.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's keep talking about the Beetle then,
Speaker 1: like you said, the People's car, We're going to tell
Speaker 1: you about the history here, because the history is a
Speaker 1: little complicated. And I don't mean like, oh, it's complicated
Speaker 1: because the Nazi Party, you know, commissioned it. It's complicated
Speaker 1: because there's a bunch of different people who they borrowed
Speaker 1: heavily from to kind of make the Beatle. Hitler and
Speaker 1: there are also, you know, various stories, depending on who
Speaker 1: you want to listen to, about whose initial idea it was. Hitler,
Speaker 1: if he were alive today, would say that it was
Speaker 1: his idea first and foremost, and he picked Austrian, a
Speaker 1: gentleman named Ferdinand Porsche mm hmmmm, porsche mm hmm, to
Speaker 1: design the first Volkswagen, and that Porsche came up with
Speaker 1: that iconic shape, you know, that round looking weird looking
Speaker 1: car for the time. I mean, we're so used to
Speaker 1: him now because it's literally the best selling car of
Speaker 1: all time by a long shot, that everyone's like, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look weird. It looks like a beetle. But
Speaker 1: back then it looked very strange.
Speaker 2: It did, and that was essentially the end of the story.
Speaker 2: Fernand Porsche came up with the design. He also came
Speaker 2: up with the the Beatles iconic characteristics, which is that
Speaker 2: the engine is in the rear, it's air cooled, it
Speaker 2: saves on space, you don't have all those tubes or
Speaker 2: whatever for water fuel, liquid fueled or cooled engine, and
Speaker 2: that it had real rear whale drive. So essentially, the
Speaker 2: Beetle was created a whole out of out of the
Speaker 2: first time out of the gate by ferinand Porsche under
Speaker 2: orders essentially from Adolf Hitler. That's like the story that
Speaker 2: most people know. Even Volkswagens like, yeah, that's not quite right.
Speaker 2: There's some other details in there that are a little different,
Speaker 2: and yet they still give all credit to ferinand Porsche, which,
Speaker 2: as we'll see, is misplaced. Really, if you drill down
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, supposedly it could fit for adults. That's the party line. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that's really not the right thing to say there,
Speaker 1: although it was the Nazi party. Yeah, but you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, it's just an expression. Sure, but two
Speaker 1: adults in that back have to be pretty small adults.
Speaker 1: The backseat didn't have a lot of room, it didn't
Speaker 1: go super fast, but it could top sixty miles an hour.
Speaker 1: At the nineteen thirty four International Automobile and motor Cycle
Speaker 1: Exhibition in Berlin, Hitler came up on stage gave a
Speaker 1: speech basically saying that you know, I have called for
Speaker 1: the creation of this car, car of the people. Something
Speaker 1: it would be affordable, something that you can drive on
Speaker 1: the Autobon, unless you're Jewish, of course, because Jewish people
Speaker 1: were not allowed to drive on the Audubon. And the
Speaker 1: initial price was nine hundred and ninety reich marks, not
Speaker 1: Deutsche Marx but reich marks, which was about thirty one
Speaker 1: week salary for the average German worker. So not a
Speaker 1: lot of money, but a lot of money at the
Speaker 1: time for sure.
Speaker 2: For sure, but still affordable, right, I mean this is
Speaker 2: unless they made you pay it all at once, then
Speaker 2: it probably wasn't very affordable. The point was to make
Speaker 2: an affordable car for Germany and then also create what
Speaker 2: almost amounted to a national state owned car company, yeahs Wagon,
Speaker 2: and to create both this car and ultimately the company
Speaker 2: that made the car, Volkswagen. In nineteen thirty four, the
Speaker 2: Reich Automotive Industry Association was formed. And that right is
Speaker 2: kind of a giveaway that the Nazis ran this consortium
Speaker 2: of privately owned car manufacturers in Germany. Brought them all
Speaker 2: together and said, defur really would like you guys to
Speaker 2: get together and make this people's car, and if not,
Speaker 2: you will all be summarily shot, and so will all
Speaker 2: of your family. I don't know if they said that
Speaker 2: last part, but I think basically everything that was said
Speaker 2: in Germany during the thirties had that unspoken attached to
Speaker 2: the end of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And you know, just to be clear,
Speaker 1: because I think I was probably confusing things a little bit.
Speaker 1: The two versions of that story is one Hitler said
Speaker 1: it was his idea, and then two Volkswagen said no,
Speaker 1: it was really Porsche's idea to begin with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that Hitler took and ran with it exactly, But
Speaker 2: I don't know that he is said to have given
Speaker 2: Porsche the credit probably not. But the upshot of it
Speaker 2: is that this consortion of German automakers hired for Nam
Speaker 2: Porsche to create and design and create this Volkswagen. So
Speaker 2: there's no question about that. Like the original Volkswagen Beetle
Speaker 2: was created by Ferdinand Porsche. What makes this whole story
Speaker 2: even more convoluted. You thought that was convoluted, everybody buckle.
Speaker 1: Up, Well, they didn't have seat belts either.
Speaker 2: Hang on to your oh shoot bar, yeah exactly. It
Speaker 2: gets way more convoluted than that because it turns out
Speaker 2: that Ferdinand Porsche either took credit for a lot of
Speaker 2: other people's ideas or just over time was given credit.
Speaker 2: They're kind of like, you know, the short sketch version
Speaker 2: of the story. Most people don't go into this much
Speaker 2: detail into the story of the VW. But we're stuff
Speaker 2: you should know, so we're going to do that. But
Speaker 2: there were a few people that kind of along the
Speaker 2: way contributed to the what would become the Beatle very directly.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like, hey, we should make a car and
Speaker 2: call it the Beetle. Their ideas were essentially taken and
Speaker 2: adopted and turned into the Beatle. Sometimes like as a whole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was. It's pretty blatant when you
Speaker 1: look at these designs and these sketches and drawings and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. The first guy we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about is Joseph Ghanz who was a Hungarian Jewish engineer,
Speaker 1: and he came to Germany after World War One, and
Speaker 1: from almost the beginning of the twentieth century, I guess
Speaker 1: it was like nineteen oh four nineteen oh five, people
Speaker 1: were talking about like a people's car. You know, motorcycles
Speaker 1: were the only kind of inexpensive way to get around,
Speaker 1: and they thought, hey, if we could get a car
Speaker 1: that's you know, not too much more than a motorcycle,
Speaker 1: it could actually hold a few Germans, then we'd be,
Speaker 1: you know, doing pretty well for ourselves. And he was
Speaker 1: a editor of a German car magazine, so he was
Speaker 1: he knew his way around the idea of like an affordable, lightweight,
Speaker 1: kind of smallish car.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, he also used that position to promote and
Speaker 2: try to drum up support for the idea of a
Speaker 2: German and people's car in the pages of that magazine too,
Speaker 2: which I think was Car und Driver. He even went
Speaker 2: so far as to design a prototype that he actually
Speaker 2: called the may Coffer the may Beetle. Yeah, nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 2: this is long before the Beatle was even called the
Speaker 2: Beetle popularly. And he had there was another car called
Speaker 2: the Standard Superior. Did you see a picture of one
Speaker 2: of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it looks like a Volkswagen Beetle exactly.
Speaker 2: And so the apparently that was based on one of
Speaker 2: Joseph Gonz's patents. So this guy definitely had a lot
Speaker 2: of contribution to the development of the Beatle. And we're talking,
Speaker 2: I mean nineteen thirty one. The Standard Superior is built.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty three the Beatles started to start to
Speaker 2: be built, and I think nineteen thirty four, thirty five,
Speaker 2: thirty six, So this is like, it's not like the
Speaker 2: Ferdinand Porsche was totally unaware of the Standard Superior. It
Speaker 2: was a car you could buy in Germany at the time.
Speaker 2: So you might say, well, why was Joseph Ghans not
Speaker 2: credited for this, Why wasn't he hired instead of Ferdinand Porsche.
Speaker 2: Well he was Jewish and he was arrested by the
Speaker 2: Gestapo before the Volkswagen Beetle was ever created, but right
Speaker 2: before it, so it was very easy for Ferdinand Porsche
Speaker 2: to be like Joseph, who these are my ideas?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He was arrested in thirty three and fled
Speaker 1: the country in thirty four, and that was kind of it.
Speaker 1: He never got any kind of compensation or anything or
Speaker 1: any recognition either, even except for I mean us and
Speaker 1: other people on the internet.
Speaker 2: I guess sure, and that's what counts, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The second guy we're going to talk about, another Hungarian engineer.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the little accents mean as far
Speaker 1: as pronoun pronunciation goes in Hungarian, but I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say bella bargni.
Speaker 2: Okay, good enough? Sure, all right.
Speaker 1: So he also wanted to build like a people's car,
Speaker 1: sort of a small and expensive thing. This was like
Speaker 1: he was a kid, He was a teenager in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen twenty when he came up with an idea
Speaker 1: for a rear wheel drived, rear engine, air cooled engine.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the sketch that he set
Speaker 1: out in nineteen twenty five, and this is what eight
Speaker 1: years before the standard Superior, even this thing looks a
Speaker 1: lot like a Volkswagen Beetle.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the Chess is exactly the same essentially, and
Speaker 2: then even the body he drew like a side view
Speaker 2: of the car and it's a Beetle. I mean, like
Speaker 2: he's creating this in nineteen twenty five, like you said,
Speaker 2: as an eighteen year old, and this one is so
Speaker 2: irrefutable that in the fifties he apparently sued Volkswagen and
Speaker 2: they said, Okay, from now on, we will refer to
Speaker 2: you as the intellectual father of the Beatle. Could you
Speaker 2: definitely lay down all the stuff that later became the Beatle,
Speaker 2: even though you weren't given credit at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he was like, does a check come along
Speaker 1: with that title?
Speaker 2: And they said nine, yeah.
Speaker 1: They probably did. It's interesting though, if you look at
Speaker 1: the I'm getting confused now. I think the Standard Superior
Speaker 1: is the one that looked like a Beatle ekscept the
Speaker 1: front end had a little kind of squared off center.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure about the front end and all the
Speaker 2: squared off business, but I do know that the lines
Speaker 2: were more right angled rather than rounded.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that's the one I was thinking of.
Speaker 1: Like what it looks like actually is people VW Beetles
Speaker 1: are highly have always been highly modifiable as far as
Speaker 1: people making them look and as we'll see later, like
Speaker 1: dune buggies or like this or that, and one of
Speaker 1: the kind of I never really liked them that much.
Speaker 1: But one of the kind of fun things you could
Speaker 1: do with the Beatle was put a little front, squared
Speaker 1: front end on it instead of that big rounded scoop,
Speaker 1: you know, a square front like a Model T forward huh.
Speaker 1: And that was something that people do to modify their Beatles.
Speaker 1: And it looks a lot like the Standard Superior that way.
Speaker 2: Oh like the hood, yeah, turning that Yeah, okay, I gotcha.
Speaker 2: I got your I wasn't I'm not up with the
Speaker 2: jargon and the lingo here I could Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know this front and end thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where the beat is.
Speaker 2: I think the standards, right, I think the Standard Superior
Speaker 2: did have a squared off hood as the way people
Speaker 2: call it.
Speaker 1: I'm a front ender. My bad.
Speaker 2: And then there was one other guy too who was Austrian.
Speaker 2: His name was Irwin Comenda, and he's the one who
Speaker 2: actually filed the patent for the body that became the Beatle.
Speaker 2: This wasn't like he drew something along the way. He
Speaker 2: was working for Porsche. Porsche produced this design for this car,
Speaker 2: and the guy who actually drew the design and patented
Speaker 2: what the car ultimately looked like was a different guy.
Speaker 2: Yet if you just listen to all the stories, essentially
Speaker 2: it was Porsche Hitler Porsche Hitler overtime. V W would
Speaker 2: try to get away from that story a little bit,
Speaker 2: but it would come back to him. They had to
Speaker 2: finally kind of deal with it head on. Yeah, as
Speaker 2: we'll see. But in the meantime, Chuck, while we wait
Speaker 2: for VW to reckon with their Nazi past, I say
Speaker 2: we take a break.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, all right. Earlier you said it
Speaker 1: was thirty five, thirty six or so, it was in
Speaker 1: fact thirty five when they delivered the first prototype. At
Speaker 1: this point it was the VW Series three. Dave helped
Speaker 1: us out with this, and he was keen to point
Speaker 1: out it was made from steel and wood, which sounds
Speaker 1: weird when you think of a car being made of
Speaker 1: steel and wood, but back then cars were made of
Speaker 1: steel and wood generally.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And this was the prototype, but I think
Speaker 2: the the eventual ones that came out were made of
Speaker 2: the same stuff. And if you look at it looks
Speaker 2: like a cross between a beatle and one of the
Speaker 2: black cabs in the UK. Yeah, like those things, like
Speaker 2: one mounted the other, and then the The Beatle Series
Speaker 2: three came out. Sure. A little fun fact of the podcast,
Speaker 2: Hitler never knew how to drive. He never had a
Speaker 2: driver's license, and yet if you step back, he was
Speaker 2: like directly in charge, or not directly in charge, but
Speaker 2: he was overseeing this Like this, he knew what was
Speaker 2: going on. Maybe not day to day, but generally he
Speaker 2: was getting updates on the progress of this car and
Speaker 2: how it was coming. Like this was not like he
Speaker 2: said something at an auto show once and then from
Speaker 2: that point on it was kind of taken over like
Speaker 2: he had like some sort of hand in it, which
Speaker 2: is just crazy if you think about it, because I
Speaker 2: remember being a teenager and hearing like, man, you know,
Speaker 2: like the Volkswagen. It was like a like a Nazi car,
Speaker 2: the Beatle was or something.
Speaker 1: I was that teenager who owned it the time, so
Speaker 1: it was a little okay.
Speaker 2: All right, I was the one throwing exit your car. Okay.
Speaker 2: But you know when you hear those things, like in
Speaker 2: college or high school or something like that, as you
Speaker 2: get older, you're like ninety eight percent of that stuff
Speaker 2: is totally wrong. It's just off. It's sometimes just totally untrue.
Speaker 2: This is one of those rare ones that's not only true,
Speaker 2: it's even worse than it seemed in college.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were throwing exit my car and sucking down
Speaker 1: your fan of orange.
Speaker 2: I was very confused at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in nineteen thirty eight they built a factory
Speaker 1: in Stuttgart to start building this car, like, you know,
Speaker 1: this tremendous you know, people's car factory. The original like
Speaker 1: off the line edition, like for real finally was called
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen Type thirty eight KDF Wagon Big K, big
Speaker 1: F little D. That stood for Kraft d'ur freuda, which
Speaker 1: is strength through which is was a literal Nazi propaganda.
Speaker 2: Slogan because you associate joy.
Speaker 1: They named their car often with the Nazis, for sure.
Speaker 2: So their plan was this nineteen thirty eight. The plan
Speaker 2: was to produce one point five million of those a year.
Speaker 2: That is ambitious in the nineteen thirties, but that's what
Speaker 2: they were going for. They ended up producing two hundred
Speaker 2: and ten.
Speaker 1: Right, not two hundred and ten thousand.
Speaker 2: No, two hundred and ten two to one zero niner.
Speaker 2: And that's it. The reason why, in large part was
Speaker 2: because the war broke out in nineteen thirty nine. The
Speaker 2: reason the war broke out was because the Nazis started everything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just want to make sure no one forgets that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. And they immediately started sort of reconfiguring
Speaker 1: the the KDF to suit their military needs. So they
Speaker 1: came out with different types of Type eighty seven, which
Speaker 1: was a four wheel drive, and I guess that German
Speaker 1: officers would drive one. They had a Type eighty two,
Speaker 1: a Kubelwagen, a bucket seat car, and that was armored.
Speaker 1: It was on that Beatles Beatles like the band you
Speaker 1: get it, m It was on a Beatle chassis, but
Speaker 1: it was armored and so therefore safe. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: some of the higher ups right around in that one
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: That one, very clearly to me, became the thing, the
Speaker 2: VW thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I knew one person in high school, Mary Francis Shepherd,
Speaker 1: had a VW thing, and I thought it was so cool.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was cool, especially in high school. It
Speaker 2: takes some gall to drive such an unusual cool car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I admit you were a little bit the same
Speaker 1: with me. I was the only person with a beatle
Speaker 1: in my whole high school because everyone else wanted like
Speaker 1: a Mazar X seven or something.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, Yeah, yeah, so that they also had a
Speaker 2: modified version of the Type eighty two or Type eighty Yeah,
Speaker 2: Type eighty two called the shwim Wogan the swimming or
Speaker 2: swimming car, and you could drive around in the water
Speaker 2: with it. I saw a picture of some dude in
Speaker 2: his vintage shim Bogan like in the water, and it
Speaker 2: looks so nerve wracking. Like the water the thing is
Speaker 2: maybe eight inches above the water line. The rest of
Speaker 2: the car is below the water to comfort. Yeah, way
Speaker 2: too close for comfort. Apparently it went six full miles
Speaker 2: an hour on the water, and there weren't very many
Speaker 2: of those made, so I imagine that that dude probably
Speaker 2: paid a lot for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably so. And I don't know if you can.
Speaker 1: I doubt if you can still find one of these.
Speaker 1: But they had a during the war, they had some
Speaker 1: gas shortages, some fuel shortages, so they developed a wood
Speaker 1: burning conversion kit for that cube of Bogan, so the
Speaker 1: bucket see car. And you know, I'm sure you looked
Speaker 1: up pictures of this thing. It had a little you know,
Speaker 1: round hatch in the front of the car. What do
Speaker 1: you call that the hood? Yeah, and you would open
Speaker 1: up that hat like a wood burning stove and put
Speaker 1: wood in there to power this thing.
Speaker 2: That's how you remember, it's called the hood. That's where
Speaker 2: you put the.
Speaker 1: Wood, right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Those are slogan, and that would power the card, not
Speaker 2: through combustion, but through pyrolysis, where the wood was gasified,
Speaker 2: and then those gases would be transferred to the pistons
Speaker 2: to make them go up and down, and then make
Speaker 2: the wheels on the bus go round and round.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that was even possible, not the wheels
Speaker 1: on the bus, but I didn't know that you could
Speaker 1: use wood in such a way to power a card.
Speaker 2: It's kind of cool, yeah, and it did work, but
Speaker 2: it didn't work very well. Yeah, to answer your question,
Speaker 2: I read some article on it, and the people said that,
Speaker 2: as far as anyone knows, none of those survived, so
Speaker 2: you would not be able to find one of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sadly. So. In the end, while they were pumping
Speaker 1: these things out, what they would use was force labor
Speaker 1: they had, and this is another horrifying fact of the show.
Speaker 1: They were for literal concentration camps and eight forced labor
Speaker 1: camps on the grounds of the Volkswagen factory complex. And
Speaker 1: that's just like, that's his not only was it a
Speaker 1: Nazi car, like they were exploiting labor to make them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it gets even worse because Ferdinand Porsche specifically
Speaker 2: asked for forced labor to be assigned to build the
Speaker 2: Volkswagens because he wanted to keep costs down. So you
Speaker 2: put all this together, Hitler's directly involved in the creation
Speaker 2: and manufacture of this car. They use slave labor and
Speaker 2: concentration camps built into the automotive factory complex. And the
Speaker 2: reason that they're using slave labor is because the chief designer,
Speaker 2: Ferdinand Porsche asked for slave labor. VW eventually had to
Speaker 2: like face this as the world kind of continued on.
Speaker 2: People are like, guys, this is we have to talk
Speaker 2: about this because this is not okay to just ignore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you wonder, like could they literally arrest
Speaker 1: fer An end Porsche for this. He was held by
Speaker 1: French authorities at one point, but he was not convicted
Speaker 1: of a crime. But in the nineties, I think it
Speaker 1: was the early nineties, Volkswagen started a couple of different payouts.
Speaker 1: They paid twelve million German marks deutsch marks, which is
Speaker 1: about sixty three million bucks today to some of the
Speaker 1: survivors who were those forced laborers from that factory. And
Speaker 1: then about eight years later in ninety nine, Porsche actually
Speaker 1: set up a fund even they were like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Volkswagen's taken all the heat on this, but it was
Speaker 1: really our guy, so maybe we should pony up some dough.
Speaker 1: So they ponied up five million euros about ten million
Speaker 1: bucks a day to compensate some of those same laborers.
Speaker 2: Yeap. So remember they only produced two hundred and ten
Speaker 2: of what became the Beatle What the type thirty eight,
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think that was it, or the Series three, one
Speaker 2: of the two. They only produced two hundred and ten
Speaker 2: of those before during the war they changed the whole
Speaker 2: VW factory to a defense vehicle factory. And then after
Speaker 2: the war when they started to get back to business,
Speaker 2: it was under oversight from the British authorities. So it actually,
Speaker 2: in a really weird way, was the Brits who first
Speaker 2: fully realized Hitler's vision for a people's car for Germany.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was in their occupation zone, so it was
Speaker 1: kind of theirs. I guess they renamed the factory to
Speaker 1: the Wolfsburg Motorworks because of the Wolfsburg Castle that was
Speaker 1: close by and that you know that. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you would recognize it depends on how much you've
Speaker 1: been in like these old Beatles and Volkswagens, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them, like later on would be like the
Speaker 1: Wolfsburg edition, if they had a special edition of a
Speaker 1: golf or something.
Speaker 2: Even I know about that, Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: Good, But they would have that little symbol, this little
Speaker 1: castle with a wolf there on the center of the
Speaker 1: steering wheel, just sort of an iconic logo.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might recognize it.
Speaker 2: Maybe is it on the hood.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 2: So with the Brits, they made twenty thousand of those things,
Speaker 2: twenty thousand essentially Beatles in nineteen forty six alone, but
Speaker 2: all of them were to be used by Allied occupation
Speaker 2: forces in Germany at the time, right, So they weren't
Speaker 2: the people's car yet, it wasn't and I think the
Speaker 2: Brits ran it from nineteen forty five to forty nine.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty nine they finally handed it back over
Speaker 2: to the West German authorities, and in the interim, I
Speaker 2: think nineteen forty eight, they hired the guy who would
Speaker 2: essentially be who you could truly call like the real
Speaker 2: actual father of the VW Beetle, a guy named Heinz Nordhoff,
Speaker 2: who took the control of this factory and like ran
Speaker 2: with it and introduced the Beetle to the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he really ramped up production. He was
Speaker 1: a very experienced car maker. He made the car a
Speaker 1: little better, I think, gave it a little more horsepower,
Speaker 1: but you know that's that's not saying much because the
Speaker 1: Beatle was never known for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would actually cough sometimes, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He gave it hydraulic brakes, which is pretty good,
Speaker 1: and chock absorbers, but again, none of that stuff was
Speaker 1: like it was always a car that felt a little
Speaker 1: janky to drive.
Speaker 2: I remember you talking about yours, and the heater was
Speaker 2: redirected waste heat from the engine on your ankles, is
Speaker 2: that correct. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They just had these little events down on the floorboards,
Speaker 1: and we call them ankle burners because it would just
Speaker 1: pump heat directly from the engine right out to your
Speaker 1: feet and it would ultimately heat the car, but it
Speaker 1: would scortch the ankles.
Speaker 2: Was it bad enough that you could smell the hair
Speaker 2: on your legs burning?
Speaker 1: I didn't have hair on my legs then.
Speaker 2: Okay, so, but it didn't have ac at all, did it?
Speaker 1: No? I know that some of the super Beetles did later,
Speaker 1: and I don't think my super Beetle did though, but
Speaker 1: my sixty eight definitely did not. It was two sixty air,
Speaker 1: which you drive sixty miles an hour and roll down
Speaker 1: two windows. Not a dad joka, that was a joke
Speaker 1: I heard.
Speaker 2: Back then, Okay from a dad probably. So heinz Nordoff,
Speaker 2: he comes in, he takes over and he's like, look,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff we can do. Like you said,
Speaker 2: we can update the car. The problem is, we can
Speaker 2: sell a million of these in Germany, but German marks
Speaker 2: are so devalued right now because of the fallout of
Speaker 2: World War two that we need to get some dollars
Speaker 2: in here. And the way that you get dollars or
Speaker 2: start selling them in America. So he tried that and
Speaker 2: it did not go very well at first, in large
Speaker 2: part because America was like, that's a Nazi car and
Speaker 2: you're probably a Nazi trying to sell us a Nazi car.
Speaker 2: And by the way, your stupid Nazi car is ugly
Speaker 2: as sin. Get out of here, Nazi. Yeah, And Heinz
Speaker 2: Nordoff was like, well, let's try this again in a year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's all it took. I think the first
Speaker 1: Beatle and it was just a single one that came
Speaker 1: to America was in nineteen forty nine. It was a
Speaker 1: Dutch car dealer named Ben Pond and he had to
Speaker 1: sell that thing for like whatever he could get, just
Speaker 1: so he could go back home, like you know, Transatlantic
Speaker 1: sale back home that He's like, all right, I barely
Speaker 1: sold the one car, so it's probably not a good
Speaker 1: idea to buy a bunch of these. But like you said,
Speaker 1: just one year later, in nineteen fifty, there was a
Speaker 1: dealer named Max Hoffman, a foreign car dealer that ended
Speaker 1: up selling three hundred and thirty Volkswagens to dealerships that
Speaker 1: were selling Porsches and Jags other foreign cars. So it
Speaker 1: fit in just a little better and doesn't look that
Speaker 1: much different. You know, those old bathtub Porsches, you know,
Speaker 1: the design isn't that different than the BW beetle. They're
Speaker 1: very round and sort of buggy looking.
Speaker 2: That's true for sure. So I think in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: they sold three hundred and thirty of them. Yeah, in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty five they sold thirty two thousand, six hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty two of them. And one of the reasons
Speaker 2: for the huge leap forward, especially considering when the year
Speaker 2: before they sold nine thousand, was that Volkswagen of America
Speaker 2: was formed, so essentially an extension of the America conversion
Speaker 2: of Volkswagen was formed, and that really kind of helps
Speaker 2: streamline importing, setting up dealerships, moving cars to those dealerships,
Speaker 2: getting car salesmen to step away from their chicken fingers
Speaker 2: in the break room and actually go out and sell
Speaker 2: the cars for once in their life. Yeah, that's really
Speaker 2: all those factors put together are what helped them start
Speaker 2: selling beetles like crazy in the mid fifties.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: All right, good, because I got a cliffhanger. A very
Speaker 1: key thing happened in the mid fifties to really ramp
Speaker 1: up sales of these. We'll talk about that right after this.
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, you left everybody hanging. You said that you
Speaker 2: had a Cliffhanger about something that happened in the fifties
Speaker 2: that really kind of revd the beadle up into hyper drive,
Speaker 2: which I think is a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I said mid fifties, it was really nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. And anyone that has been around the advertising
Speaker 1: industry or even knows a little bit about it or
Speaker 1: watch mad Men, knows that there was a series of brilliant,
Speaker 1: brilliant ads brought forth by the DDB and almost aid
Speaker 1: insurance agency ad agency that I hate to say this,
Speaker 1: but they leaned into what people didn't like about the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen and tried to make that a selling point, and
Speaker 1: they did so to tremendous success.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a real game changer. Yeah. So this
Speaker 2: I mean, like everybody in advertising knows about this, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people outside of advertising know about because
Speaker 2: it's just talked about so much. And the reason why
Speaker 2: it was a great ad campaign just visually speaking, they
Speaker 2: used all sorts of different techniques that were very much
Speaker 2: different than than what you would normally find to sell
Speaker 2: American cars, which were huge land yachts at the time.
Speaker 2: This is the I think the first compact car that
Speaker 2: America ever encountered, but like you said, they they really
Speaker 2: kind of took some of the criticisms of the Beatle
Speaker 2: and turned them into selling points. One of the first
Speaker 2: things they said was that it's ugly, but it gets
Speaker 2: you there. So this this was just one example of
Speaker 2: what came to be called an anti ad campaign. It
Speaker 2: was like the what was that Paul Reiser movie from
Speaker 2: the eighties where he like just turns the ad world
Speaker 2: on its head by just speaking the truth about the
Speaker 2: products he's selling, you know, the one? No, yeah, what
Speaker 2: it was like an ad for Volva was there. They're
Speaker 2: boxy but they're good.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that movie.
Speaker 2: I can't remember what it was called. It doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: but it was basically a movie based on this, even
Speaker 2: though they would it was never to be like a
Speaker 2: fictionalized version of it. They just I think it gave
Speaker 2: the screenwriter an idea, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll get you. One of the ads became, and
Speaker 1: I guess it was the most famous one. It's not
Speaker 1: the one I think at first, but it was named
Speaker 1: ad of the Century by ad Age. It was it
Speaker 1: just said think small. And the one I remember most
Speaker 1: specifically was and not by seeing it you know, live
Speaker 1: obviously because this was before my time. But I just
Speaker 1: remember seeing I guess reading about or something. But it
Speaker 1: was just a picture of the VW Beetle and it
Speaker 1: said Lemon underneath it. Oh yeah, yeah, which Lemon is,
Speaker 1: you know, a car that's kind of sucks.
Speaker 2: Right, So I'm not sure what they were going for
Speaker 2: with that. Can you explain?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. I mean the same as the
Speaker 1: other ones that say ugly is only skin deep. You know,
Speaker 1: they were just sort of playing upon people it was
Speaker 1: ugly or saying it was you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if people were saying it was a quality car, because
Speaker 1: Lemon definitely indicates like it doesn't run well. So that
Speaker 1: was a real sort of extra brave, I think, even
Speaker 1: compared to the rest.
Speaker 2: I mean even I don't get that one at all.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense to me. I'll have to
Speaker 2: go look further into it.
Speaker 1: What's your search, norm? Can someone explain to me why they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll write it out exactly like that.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I don't think it's that much different
Speaker 1: than saying it's ugly.
Speaker 2: No, it is, because ugly, it's like, that's all just
Speaker 2: a point of view it's it's subjective and really, ultimately,
Speaker 2: if the car runs, well, a lot of people don't
Speaker 2: care what it looks like a lemon. Everyone cares that
Speaker 2: the car is not going to run. Well, it does not.
Speaker 2: It makes no sense to me whatsoever, But I'll figure
Speaker 2: it out on all report back. How about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well maybe that's why I remembered it because it
Speaker 1: didn't make.
Speaker 2: Any sense, right, But yeah, and I guess you ended
Speaker 2: up buying one, so there you go. Uh, well, my
Speaker 2: favorite one was lived below your means.
Speaker 1: That's pretty fun. But who wants to do that?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you who wants to do that. People
Speaker 2: who essentially were the basis of the counterculture, the people
Speaker 2: who were the beats a few years earlier, sorted to
Speaker 2: grow up, started to go to college, were very highly educated,
Speaker 2: but still did not want to follow in the exact
Speaker 2: steps of their parents, and the beetle kind of gave
Speaker 2: them a well, a vehicle out of their parents' shadow
Speaker 2: to kind of forge their own path. It was basically
Speaker 2: a finger to the crew cut. Buying a Beetle was
Speaker 2: in the early sixties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's very weird that my parents bought one
Speaker 1: brand new in sixty eight because they were not that
Speaker 1: at all. My dad was the crew cut like literally, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know, they weren't counterculture, like I have
Speaker 1: no idea. Maybe, I mean, maybe my mom thought it
Speaker 1: was cute, maybe my dad did. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to ask my mom about that. But
Speaker 1: cost wise, it's probably because of the cost, because they
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of money, and in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: you could get a Beetle for one five hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five bucks compared to about twenty four hundred four
Speaker 1: Ford Mustang at the time, or close to seven grand
Speaker 1: for a convertible Lincoln Continental. So it was definitely affordable
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that's probably why they got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so they started selling a ton of these things.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty eight, they sold four hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: thousand just in America, and by this time, by this
Speaker 2: year around the world, it was the best selling car
Speaker 2: in the world. This was twenty years after Heinz Nordoff
Speaker 2: took over. So we went from essentially this Nazi car
Speaker 2: to the best selling car in the world in two decades,
Speaker 2: which is quite a feat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, just a year after that, it got
Speaker 1: a big bump when Disney came out with the love
Speaker 1: Bug movies. The initial one was just the love Bug
Speaker 1: and Herbie, of course, was the name of that sixty
Speaker 1: three beetle that If you haven't seen those movies, they're
Speaker 1: like those sixties early seventies Disney movies are kind of fun,
Speaker 1: but they're not great. But Herbie was definitely a lovable car.
Speaker 1: And you can still see Herbie versions driving around with
Speaker 1: the two off center stripes. Yeah, and whatever the number
Speaker 1: in the circle was, I can't remember what it's racing number.
Speaker 2: Was, sixty three or fifty three.
Speaker 1: Well, it was probably sixty three because it was a
Speaker 1: sixty three Beatle.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Okay, I'm more of a Snowball Express man myself.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen that one? No, it's a good one. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: just check that one out and thank me later.
Speaker 1: I bet this stuff is all on the Disney app
Speaker 1: don't they have all their classics on there.
Speaker 2: Snowball Express for sure, watch that one and then watch
Speaker 2: the North Avenue Irregulars.
Speaker 1: Those are but I do remember that one. I love
Speaker 1: that movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, So if you love North Avenue Regulars, there's a
Speaker 2: good chance you're going to like Snowball Express, I guarantee it.
Speaker 1: One thing about the movie, though, was it was a
Speaker 1: It wasn't a radio controlled car, like it's driving around
Speaker 1: by itself. That's whole concept that this is a car
Speaker 1: is kind of alive. And you might think, oh, cool,
Speaker 1: they figured out how to remote control this car. It
Speaker 1: was actually a movie making trick where they have somebody
Speaker 1: down out of view of the windows, kind of in
Speaker 1: the back seat, like a stunt driver driving that thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we say that because there's a bunch of
Speaker 2: people on the internet saying this is, what's the world's
Speaker 2: first self driving car? And they're just wrong, wrong, wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that people claim that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wrongly? What about what about Mexico? Chuck, because it
Speaker 2: turns out that Mexico and the beetle go hand in hand.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that, though, Oh you didn't know that. No,
Speaker 2: I mean, I know, I didn't. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: even try to bs my way out of it. I
Speaker 2: did not know that.
Speaker 1: I am surprised that you've been to Mexico City and
Speaker 1: that you did not notice the inordinate amount of VW
Speaker 1: beetles driving around.
Speaker 2: I just saw forest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was kind of one of the
Speaker 1: things I was looking forward to when I went to
Speaker 1: Mexico City for the first time because I heard they
Speaker 1: were just like VW beetles everywhere, and there are because
Speaker 1: they were made there until two thousand three, which is remarkable.
Speaker 1: Like you can buy a two thousand and three you know,
Speaker 1: final year edition Mexican Volkswagen Beetle. I went online immediately,
Speaker 1: and like you can buy one for like fifteen grand
Speaker 1: that I saw that was looked to be in pretty
Speaker 1: good shape. And that's kind of all I want now.
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know somebody's got a birthday coming up
Speaker 2: in Yeah. They they actually the factory in Pueblo, Mexico,
Speaker 2: which was the first plant outside of Germany, or the
Speaker 2: largest plant outside of Germany. It outlasted the one in Wolfsburg,
Speaker 2: I think the one in Wolfsburg shut down or the sorry, yeah,
Speaker 2: the one it was in Stuttgart, the Wolfsburg plant in
Speaker 2: Stucart it shut down in nineteen seventy four, and like
Speaker 2: you said, the Mexican plant kept going until two thousand
Speaker 2: and three.
Speaker 1: So amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again they stopped selling new beetles in the
Speaker 2: States in nineteen seventy nine. But Latin America is like,
Speaker 2: we still love them, so keep them coming Mexico in
Speaker 2: Mexico staid right.
Speaker 1: On, Yeah, for sure. I mentioned earlier sort of the
Speaker 1: dune buggy conversion that some people have done. The initial guy,
Speaker 1: I guess, or I don't know if he was the
Speaker 1: first one, but the guy that really got famous for
Speaker 1: it was a California kind of car guy and racer
Speaker 1: named Bruce Myers, and he was a dune buggy guy.
Speaker 1: He built a kit car using a beatle chassis and
Speaker 1: kind of reconfigured the shell. If you've ever seen like
Speaker 1: Wonderbug the Sid Marty Croft show from the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: it's that kind of dune buggy. But it was called
Speaker 1: the Myers Manx, very very popular, especially in California. After
Speaker 1: he won the Baja one thousand and one of those
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven. And I went to the Myers
Speaker 1: Manx website. They are building a new one, the first
Speaker 1: one in decades. It's called the Manx two point zero EV,
Speaker 1: and it is did you see this thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I did. They're amazing.
Speaker 1: Oh man. I immediately was like, should I put a
Speaker 1: deposit down on this thing. It's like five hundred bucks
Speaker 1: to put down a deposit, right, seventy four thousand dollars
Speaker 1: starting price. So I immediately was like, oh, I don't think so,
Speaker 1: all just admire them.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah. They had another one. I can't remember what
Speaker 2: it was called, but it was like one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five grand starting or something. These are like these
Speaker 2: are like doom buggies, electric doom buggies essentially, and I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that they go off road. I didn't have
Speaker 2: that impression.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's gonna if
Speaker 1: it's a Manx, it'll it'll do all you want.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, it's good.
Speaker 1: So it's got a pretty it's because it's so small,
Speaker 1: it's gonna have a limited range, like one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five miles. But if you're a listener out there
Speaker 1: and you end up getting one of these, I will
Speaker 1: meet you wherever you are in the United States to
Speaker 1: ride around in it with you. Oh cool, you go
Speaker 1: putting out that offer.
Speaker 2: Right now, I think we should talk about a few
Speaker 2: a few stats, a few records that VW put out. Sure, Well,
Speaker 2: one thing was that they they kept kind of upgrading
Speaker 2: or updating or tweaking the in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 2: But if you really look at the first Bug that
Speaker 2: came out in the forties and you look at the
Speaker 2: Bugs that were produced until two thousand and three, they
Speaker 2: don't look very different. It's essentially the same car, which
Speaker 2: is why it's considered the longest selling car of all time.
Speaker 2: It's the greatest selling of all time. I think they
Speaker 2: sold a twenty one million plus Beetles over the production run.
Speaker 2: But it's like it was essentially the same car, and
Speaker 2: so they would tweak it and release these limited editions
Speaker 2: once in a while. One was the Sports Bug, one
Speaker 2: was a bi Centennial Bug, and then there was one
Speaker 2: that came out in nineteen seventy seven called the Champagne Edition.
Speaker 2: And I looked into these and it seemed like maybe
Speaker 2: they had like a different exclusive paint color, or there
Speaker 2: was a slight tweak to the trim package or something.
Speaker 2: The Champagne Edition came with a coke mer and a
Speaker 2: vacuum shaped metal straw, but other than that, they seemed
Speaker 2: like just regular Beetles. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a convertible, but there were other convertibles.
Speaker 1: I always wanted a convertible to because you know, back
Speaker 1: in those days with the Beatles, it was just like
Speaker 1: a couple of twists of a knobs and then you
Speaker 1: manually just sort of threw it back over your head.
Speaker 1: Never was able to get a convertible, You're right about.
Speaker 1: The body style never changed. The tail lights would change
Speaker 1: shape a little bit here and there, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of one of the ways you could tell what year
Speaker 1: it was. Okay, but other than some sort of headlight
Speaker 1: tail light stuff, it was basically the same shape. Even
Speaker 1: through the Super Beetle. They might have been a slightly
Speaker 1: different shape. They were a little bit bigger, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: but not much because I had a super Beetle and
Speaker 1: it's not like it was roomy, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you had to be paying attention to probably
Speaker 2: spot the difference between a beetle and a super Beetle
Speaker 2: unless they, yeah, park next to each other, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But VW Beetle owners and are still
Speaker 1: very much known for being very into them and sort
Speaker 1: of knowing that kind of stuff is sort of like
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a car usually, it was like something
Speaker 1: that you adored and we're into and you could get
Speaker 1: parts cheap, and you know, generally work on it yourself,
Speaker 1: because when you looked at that engine, it looked like
Speaker 1: it had like nine or ten parts totally. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And apparently VW dealerships kept all parts in stock
Speaker 2: from all years. Essentially they had huge, huge stockpiles apart,
Speaker 2: so you could always be like, well, I can at
Speaker 2: least go get this thing fixed pretty cheaply.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and we should probably close with a
Speaker 1: car that you owned, or at least a bought that thing, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was Yumi's car, the new Beetle. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was cute.
Speaker 1: Didn't surprise me. It was super cute and it just
Speaker 1: fit you mean to a t.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, she would do donuts in that thing
Speaker 2: all day long. It had the best like turn radius.
Speaker 1: Oh really really, I mean yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Would turn fine. But she didn't actually do donuts as
Speaker 2: far as I ever knew.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I knew that part was true, but
Speaker 1: I thought it had like a noted turn radius or something. No, okay,
Speaker 1: you just got me on that.
Speaker 2: I did. But one thing it did have, Chuck, was
Speaker 2: a little vase, a little flower vase next to the
Speaker 2: steering wheel. Do you remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very cute, and they I think they look
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I wish they would have made it a
Speaker 1: little more traditionally looking like a bug like. The couple
Speaker 1: of things that bothered me, and this is nitpicky as
Speaker 1: a beetle guy, was the flush headlights and the flush
Speaker 1: tail lights. I always love that they stuck out before.
Speaker 1: But aside from that, I think they honored it quite well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did an update in twenty eleven that I
Speaker 2: thought was pretty cool too.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I saw that one. I'll have
Speaker 1: to look that one up.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you look that up. I'm going to look
Speaker 2: at the text of your square back Beetle station wagon. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going to look up that lemon that confusing lemon
Speaker 2: add okay, And there might have been something else, so
Speaker 2: I'll have to go back and re listen to this.
Speaker 1: Well, I got one more quick little thing because if
Speaker 1: you have ever been in a Beetle or owned one,
Speaker 1: and this is something I didn't know until Day pointed
Speaker 1: this out, there's a very particular smell that when I
Speaker 1: stick my head in a Beetle, it's just like it
Speaker 1: zaps me back. It smelled like no other car made
Speaker 1: on the interior, and apparently that came from the cushioning
Speaker 1: of the seats. It was made out of coconut hair,
Speaker 1: and I remember seeing that coconut hair like falling out
Speaker 1: from under my seats and stuff, But I never knew
Speaker 1: that was what the smell was due to.
Speaker 2: Did it smell like coconuts or it just had this
Speaker 2: distinct smell.
Speaker 1: Just a distinct smell. I think it was the vinyl
Speaker 1: combined with that coconut hair. It was just super super distinct.
Speaker 2: Very nice. Well, I guess, well, Chucks, do you have
Speaker 2: anything else?
Speaker 1: No, that's it.
Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck started nostalgizing, then he just accidentally triggered
Speaker 2: listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right. I'm gonna call this, I guess a follow
Speaker 1: up on Madman Mounts because this is a pretty fun email.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, A big fan of the show. I was
Speaker 1: very excited listening to the topic on eight tracks and
Speaker 1: was thinking silently, they better mentioned months. They better mentioned
Speaker 1: months because Earl Madman Muntz was born here in Elgin, Illinois.
Speaker 1: He led a very colorful life, and his part of
Speaker 1: the A Trex story is only small portion of that wildlife.
Speaker 1: He was an innovator in giant screen televisions, cellular telephones
Speaker 1: for cars and satellite receivers. He started as a car
Speaker 1: salesman and this is the basis of the typical crazy
Speaker 1: used car salesman thing. And one of his slogans was,
Speaker 1: I buy them high and sell them low. It's more
Speaker 1: fun that way. Don't tell missus Munts. And she pointed
Speaker 1: out he failed to mention what Missus Munds he was
Speaker 1: talking about, because I think he had seven wives.
Speaker 2: I think I saw that when we were doing the
Speaker 2: eight track research. What that ad no, that he had
Speaker 2: had seven marriages.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, you know, I'm not one to blame
Speaker 1: a divorce on a person, but if you've been married
Speaker 1: seven times, you may be the problem, you know.
Speaker 2: Sure he would.
Speaker 1: Smash cars with sledgehammers, where a tricorn hat with red
Speaker 1: long John's So he was you know, he was supposedly
Speaker 1: invented the wacky car salesman guy routine.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So mad been months will be the subject of the
Speaker 1: Elgin History Museum's podcast Echoes of Elgin on August first
Speaker 1: of this year. If you want to learn a little
Speaker 1: bit more, and this is coming from Rebecca Miller, who
Speaker 1: is the museum educator at the Elgin History Museum.
Speaker 2: Very neat. Thanks a lot, Rebecca Chuck. I have to
Speaker 2: say I have a terrible feeling that we're going to
Speaker 2: get a lot of follow up emails saying it's pronounced Elgin.
Speaker 1: Oh is it Elgin?
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I could just totally.
Speaker 1: See it all right, Well, just pretend I said Elgin.
Speaker 2: If that's the case, we'll have Jerry go edit hard
Speaker 2: g's into all the time, she said Elgin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, instead of giving her full read, I'll just go, yeah, Jerry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just lace that in.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Rebecca and bring us
Speaker 2: up to speed on somebody we just kind of mentioned
Speaker 2: but really walked past. Love that kind of thing. You
Speaker 2: can do what Rebecca did and send us an email.
Speaker 2: Send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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