Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and I love all things tech. And in
Speaker 1: our last episode, we talked about the founding of Volkswagen,
Speaker 1: how designer, engineer and entrepreneur Ferdinand Porsche and his son,
Speaker 1: also Ferdinand Porsche, but known as Fiery, responded to a
Speaker 1: call from Adolf Hitler to design a people's car and
Speaker 1: how that led to establishing Volkswagen as a company. We
Speaker 1: also talked about how the manufacturing facility would switch gears
Speaker 1: so to speak, to go into wartime production for the
Speaker 1: German military during World War Two, how that made the
Speaker 1: new Volkswagen facility a target during Allied bombing runs, and
Speaker 1: how a British officer named Hearst campaign to return the
Speaker 1: manufacturing plant back to its originally intended purpose producing civilian automobiles.
Speaker 1: And then we talked a lot about the Volkswagen Beetle.
Speaker 1: But there's more to cover than just the old love bug.
Speaker 1: So what else did Volkswagen the company do over the years. Well,
Speaker 1: for the first few years after World War Two, the
Speaker 1: company focused exclusively on building the Type one. That's the
Speaker 1: car that was known in the US as the aforementioned
Speaker 1: Beetle or the Volkswagen Bug. The first priority for the
Speaker 1: company was producing cars to be used by British officials
Speaker 1: who were largely in charge of running Germany after Germany's
Speaker 1: surrender after World War Two in ninety eight, after successfully
Speaker 1: restoring the manufacturing facility to working order, the British government
Speaker 1: tried to find someone else to take over the facility.
Speaker 1: They offered it up to companies and agencies in France, Australia,
Speaker 1: Britain and the United States, but no one was eager
Speaker 1: to take them up on it. A year later, the
Speaker 1: British military found the person to take over the operations,
Speaker 1: a man named Heinrich Nordoff. Nordoff was born in Germany
Speaker 1: and had worked for a company called opal Ope L,
Speaker 1: a property of US automotive company General Motors, during World
Speaker 1: War Two. He oversaw the production of trucks. That facility
Speaker 1: also reportedly relied at least in part on forced labor,
Speaker 1: just as Volkswagen had during World War Two. After the war,
Speaker 1: the British military relied on Heinrich's expertise and eventually made
Speaker 1: him the managing director of the Volkswagen facility. Mainly due
Speaker 1: to the urging of Major Hearst, the British official who
Speaker 1: had taken it over, Nordoff was able to ramp up
Speaker 1: production beyond the relatively modest levels that the British military
Speaker 1: had managed. He optimized processes, he made the whole operation
Speaker 1: more efficient, and he doubled the manufacturing output in short
Speaker 1: order and technically. It was around this time that the
Speaker 1: company would officially adopt Volkswagen as its name. It would
Speaker 1: become one of the more important manufacturing companies in the
Speaker 1: nation of West Germany, with the region of Lower Saxony
Speaker 1: in West Germany receiving a twenty percent voting stake in Volkswagen.
Speaker 1: The company made Type one models with different engine capacities,
Speaker 1: the earliest being the modest eleven hundred cc or one
Speaker 1: point one Leader engine that worked fine for the early
Speaker 1: days of motoring in post war Germany, but it didn't
Speaker 1: quite match the expectations for people living in other markets,
Speaker 1: so the manufacturing facility began making Type one vehicles with
Speaker 1: slightly beefier engines. While operations were picking up financial limitations
Speaker 1: meant that the company wasn't really able to focus too
Speaker 1: much on expanding beyond the Type one car. Ter ben
Speaker 1: Pone Pone was a car dealer in the Netherlands who
Speaker 1: imported Volkswagen's to sell them in his home country. He
Speaker 1: had taken over his father's business. Originally was all about
Speaker 1: selling sewing machines, but had gradually over time added things
Speaker 1: like bicycles, motorized bikes and motorcycles, and then cars to
Speaker 1: its list of products. After World War Two, he visited
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen plant and he was impressed by the Type
Speaker 1: one vehicle. He and the company came to an agreement
Speaker 1: that would make ben Pons Dealership the first outside of
Speaker 1: Germany to offer the Type one the VW Beetle, and
Speaker 1: while at the facility, Pone saw a curious vehicle. Now,
Speaker 1: it was built on top of a Type one chassis,
Speaker 1: but it definitely didn't look like a VW Beetle. So
Speaker 1: imagine a pickup truck. Now imagine that the bed of
Speaker 1: the truck isn't behind the cab where the driver sits,
Speaker 1: but it's instead in front of the cab. Now, remember
Speaker 1: the Type one was a rear engine rear wheel drive vehicle.
Speaker 1: So in this design you would have the engine mounted
Speaker 1: on the back of the chassis. Above the engine compartment
Speaker 1: would be a cab where the driver would sit, so
Speaker 1: the engine is essentially under the driver's seating area. The
Speaker 1: area in front of the cab was a flat platform
Speaker 1: upon which workers could put parts to transport them to
Speaker 1: other areas within the manufacturing facility. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a forklift, only without the lift part. Because the
Speaker 1: platform on the chassis didn't move, it was called a
Speaker 1: plot in vagin. Pond saw this and thought, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: post war Europe is really going to need some commercial
Speaker 1: vehicles for businesses of various sizes so that everything can
Speaker 1: get up and running again. And the chassis for this
Speaker 1: little car can be used for lots of different types
Speaker 1: of builds. So Pond then starts to sketch out an idea.
Speaker 1: His design called for a small van built on top
Speaker 1: of the Type one chassis. The driver and passenger of
Speaker 1: the van would sit up front in a cab that
Speaker 1: was at the extreme front end of the via goal
Speaker 1: and this was made possible because, again the engine for
Speaker 1: the vehicle would be in the back. So think of
Speaker 1: things like your typical school bus where that has that
Speaker 1: flat front, those style school buses. That's what this one
Speaker 1: would be like too. In a way. The body they
Speaker 1: sketched out was essentially a box, and the idea was
Speaker 1: that such a vehicle would be able to carry a
Speaker 1: good deal of materials or passengers and serve as a
Speaker 1: light commercial vehicle in Europe. Pone also said he would
Speaker 1: want such a vehicle to weigh around seven rams when
Speaker 1: empty that's about one thousand, six hundred fifty pounds, and
Speaker 1: that it should be able to carry essentially an equal
Speaker 1: amount of weight. Now, Poe wasn't in the manufacturing business himself.
Speaker 1: He was a car dealer, not a car maker, so
Speaker 1: he handed over his design to his contacts at Volkswagen.
Speaker 1: Nordoff and his technical director, Alfred Hessner looked over Pone's
Speaker 1: design and they liked it. They particularly liked that it
Speaker 1: would make use of a chassis that the plant was
Speaker 1: already producing. So in their mind they said, well, there
Speaker 1: would be no need to develop, test and build a
Speaker 1: new chassis, so that cuts down on the development cost
Speaker 1: of getting into producing this vehicle. So with these bonuses
Speaker 1: in mind, they decided to pursue this new vehicle model.
Speaker 1: It took a little time to schedule a prototype because
Speaker 1: they were still in full production mode for the Type one,
Speaker 1: and they then finally got things going. It only took
Speaker 1: three months from the point where they started the process
Speaker 1: to when they could roll off a prototype. But along
Speaker 1: the way they also learned some valuable lessons. Now, as
Speaker 1: it turned out, the weight of this new vehicle and
Speaker 1: the weight that it would ultimately hold would require Volkswagen
Speaker 1: to go back and tweak the chassis after all, because
Speaker 1: it just wasn't gonna be strong enough to carry three
Speaker 1: thousand or more pounds of weight if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a fully loaded vehicle. So they went back and built
Speaker 1: a ladder chassis. That's called a ladder chassis because it
Speaker 1: kind of looks like a ladder, So you know how
Speaker 1: a ladder has two long rails that are connected by rungs.
Speaker 1: A ladder chassis is story of the same way. It's
Speaker 1: the chassis or the base of a vehicle, and it
Speaker 1: has those sort of horizontal rungs running across to provide
Speaker 1: more strength and more stability, so it gives the chassis
Speaker 1: a stronger frame. Despite this unexpected cost, the project did
Speaker 1: continue and Volkswagen engineers had another challenge, how to make
Speaker 1: a Volkswagen engine power a vehicle that could at max
Speaker 1: wait top out at around three thousand pounds or um.
Speaker 1: So to do that, they looked at one of the
Speaker 1: vehicles that the factory had made during World War Two.
Speaker 1: That'd be the kubel Wagen. Now, if you listen to
Speaker 1: my last episode, you know that this was the lightweight
Speaker 1: two wheeled general purpose military vehicles, sort of the German
Speaker 1: equivalent to the United States g and Volkswagen had produced
Speaker 1: these during the war. The vehicle, the kugol Wagon, that is,
Speaker 1: had a reduction gear system to manage torque, and so
Speaker 1: the VW engineers took that design and then adapted it
Speaker 1: for this new commercial vehicle. Now, beyond these mechanical challenges,
Speaker 1: Volkswagen faced some other hurdles. One was that when they
Speaker 1: tested this design in wind tunnels, this boxy shaped bus
Speaker 1: wasn't shaping up to be particularly useful. The wind resistance
Speaker 1: was considerable, meaning that the engine was going to have
Speaker 1: to work even harder to move the vehicle, and thus
Speaker 1: you would waste fuel. Designers began to make some changes
Speaker 1: to the structure, including a split windshield design that was
Speaker 1: divided down the front. Eventually all the pieces fell into place,
Speaker 1: and on November twelfth, nine, the first of the Volkswagen
Speaker 1: Type two models rolled off the production line. By the way,
Speaker 1: you should consider that date to have an asterisk by it,
Speaker 1: because this is one of those cases where I found
Speaker 1: multiple sources, all with different dates listed for that first
Speaker 1: Type two, So depending on some that figure could be
Speaker 1: off by as much as a year. But that was
Speaker 1: the one that I found that seemed to be the
Speaker 1: most reliable resource, So again uh ish. Now, the Type
Speaker 1: two has many names. In the United States, you would
Speaker 1: typically hear it described as the VW Bus. In other
Speaker 1: places it was called the COMBI, which is short for
Speaker 1: a combination vehicle more on that in a second, or
Speaker 1: the splitty because it had that split windshield, or in
Speaker 1: Germany it was called the v W Bully, among many
Speaker 1: other names. At Volkswagen, the comby ko Mbi version referred
Speaker 1: to a type of Volkswagen bus that had either side
Speaker 1: windows and removable seats, which meant that you could actually
Speaker 1: put passengers in there it should be fairly comfortable, or
Speaker 1: you could get a second version called the commercial that
Speaker 1: had no windows on the side. It was meant to
Speaker 1: be a cargo van, so it wasn't meant to carry
Speaker 1: people in the back. If you were in the back
Speaker 1: of one of those would be very dark and probably
Speaker 1: a little scary. And then it would emerge in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen fifties, but here in the United States it
Speaker 1: would really take off about a decade later. It would
Speaker 1: become a symbol of the counterculture movement, and many people
Speaker 1: would associate it with hippies. Now, the funny thing to
Speaker 1: me is that the whole reason for the Type two
Speaker 1: to exist in the first place was that Ben Pone
Speaker 1: wanted a low cost, efficient vehicle to help European businesses
Speaker 1: get up and running after the war. He wanted something
Speaker 1: that was easy to work on, easy to maintain. It
Speaker 1: was meant to be affordable and utilitarian, in other words,
Speaker 1: not fancy, not necessarily sought after, but useful. Years later,
Speaker 1: after Volkswagen ended production on the Type too, some of
Speaker 1: those early models would end up bringing huge auction prices
Speaker 1: among avid collectors and avid Volkswagen fans. Some of them
Speaker 1: sold for several hundred thousand dollars. Quite the opposite of
Speaker 1: Ben Poem's initial vision. The Type two was an instant
Speaker 1: success in Europe, so much so that the demand actually
Speaker 1: required Volkswagen to invest in a new manufacturing facility so
Speaker 1: that it can meet its production goals for both the
Speaker 1: Type one, the beatle, and the Type two, the bus.
Speaker 1: The company selected a site in Hanover to build a
Speaker 1: new manufacturing facility, and that plant became the main center
Speaker 1: of operations focused on building Volkswagen vehicles for the commercial sector. Now,
Speaker 1: I can't really get into every single vehicle Volkswagen had
Speaker 1: produced over the course of its entire history. Uh, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them that only appeared in specific markets,
Speaker 1: and we're virtually unknown elsewhere in the world. So I
Speaker 1: would be spending all my time trying to blaine why
Speaker 1: a certain car would appear in certain places the world
Speaker 1: but wasn't found anywhere else. But this one story that
Speaker 1: I want to convey next is really interesting, particularly to me,
Speaker 1: and it shows how different companies were willing to come
Speaker 1: together and collaborate when there was opportunity to tap into
Speaker 1: an emerging market. Okay, so, by the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: Europe was transitioning from recovery and into a more booming economy.
Speaker 1: You know, and immediately after World War Two, it was
Speaker 1: all about how can we get back to where we were?
Speaker 1: Then it was we're actually prospering for the automotive industry.
Speaker 1: This meant that there was a chance to make a
Speaker 1: more upscale vehicle, something with a bit more luxury than
Speaker 1: a workhorse Type one beetle or a Type two microbus.
Speaker 1: And there were three different companies that would come together
Speaker 1: to do this with UH for the Volkswagen picture, one
Speaker 1: of them being Volkswagen, the other two i'll get into.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of them was a company, a German
Speaker 1: company called Carmen spelled k A R M A n N.
Speaker 1: It was founded by a dude named Wilhelm Carmen, and
Speaker 1: this company traced its history all the way back to
Speaker 1: nineteen o one. Although that company was built on top
Speaker 1: of an even older coach building business that was run
Speaker 1: by a guy named Christianne Claugus. Bill Helm oversaw the
Speaker 1: coach building business transition over to an automotive industry right away.
Speaker 1: Mainly his company would build car bodies, so he would
Speaker 1: use car chassiss that were made by other manufacturers. He
Speaker 1: wasn't building that part. He would bring the chassis and
Speaker 1: then design and build car bodies on top of it.
Speaker 1: So his business had gone into hibernation during World War
Speaker 1: Two and he essentially was not doing any of that
Speaker 1: business while the war was going on. But afterward he
Speaker 1: got back into production. And then Volkswagen placed an order
Speaker 1: for convertible tops for the Type one Beatle for variation
Speaker 1: known as the Cabriole. So Carmen and Volkswagen had a
Speaker 1: previously established working relationship. But that was just one of
Speaker 1: the other two companies that worked with Volkswagen on this
Speaker 1: new concept. And when we come back, I'll talk about
Speaker 1: the other one, but first let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: all right. Before the break, I was teasing about that
Speaker 1: third party. And the third party that I have hinted
Speaker 1: at was the Italian automobile design company Carrazeria Gia. And
Speaker 1: I know I've butchered the pronunciation, as I do all languages,
Speaker 1: but this was a company that was established by Giacinto
Speaker 1: Gia at the early twentie century, and the company didn't
Speaker 1: produce cars. They weren't a car manufacturer. They designed cars.
Speaker 1: They might build a limited number of cars, but it
Speaker 1: was in a very pain staking, almost handmade kind of approach.
Speaker 1: So Gia would work with a lot of other automotive
Speaker 1: companies designing their car bodies or sometimes just specific elements
Speaker 1: on a car. So for example, in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: Gia worked on the body for a Fiat five oh
Speaker 1: eight S Spider sports car. Now, during World War Two,
Speaker 1: Carozeria Guilla's facilities were all but destroyed. Giacinto Gia wanted
Speaker 1: to rebuild, but before he could oversee those efforts, he
Speaker 1: took ill and then he passed away in nineteen four.
Speaker 1: His company, however, would live on after his death. His
Speaker 1: widow gave the company over to Felice se Mario Boana
Speaker 1: and Giorgio albert So. Buano, in turn would later bring
Speaker 1: in a businessman named Luigi Segre, who pushed the company
Speaker 1: to make more international contracts. This ultimately led to Seregre
Speaker 1: effectively taking over Gia. So we now get to the
Speaker 1: weird part of this story. Villhelm Carmen thought that the
Speaker 1: chassis of the Volkswagen Type one would serve as the
Speaker 1: basis for a much more sporty body than the Volkswagen Beetle,
Speaker 1: and he thought that that would be a valuable thing
Speaker 1: to pursue. However, nord Off over at Volkswagen wasn't particularly interested,
Speaker 1: so he turned elsewhere. You see, Carmen had run into
Speaker 1: Luigi Segre several times at various automotive industry events in Europe,
Speaker 1: so he met up with Segrey to talk about the
Speaker 1: possibility of developing a sports car on top of a
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Type one chassis. There was no real hope of
Speaker 1: getting Volkswagen on board from the get go nord Off
Speaker 1: you know again, the head of Volkswagen. He was more
Speaker 1: focused on producing cars for the average European that didn't
Speaker 1: really see the business case for more sporty vehicles. So
Speaker 1: Segre agreed to have Carozeria Gia designer prototype after getting
Speaker 1: hold of a Type one Volkswagen. They literally bought a
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Beetle and they drove it over to Guia's headquarters
Speaker 1: in Turin, and then they stripped it bare all the
Speaker 1: way down to the chassis in order to build a
Speaker 1: brand new body on top of it. Now, this was
Speaker 1: to become the prototype for the Carmen Gia, and there's
Speaker 1: controversy surrounding who actually designed the look of the thing.
Speaker 1: If you've never seen one, you should look up Carmen
Speaker 1: Gia on the internet, and it's as I said k
Speaker 1: A R M A N N and Guia as g H.
Speaker 1: I A look it up because it's a sporty little car.
Speaker 1: I think it's adorable, really cute. And there were some
Speaker 1: who said that Mario Bolano was clearly the designer with
Speaker 1: the most input in the design process. Other people dispute that.
Speaker 1: They said, no, it was this other designer who did
Speaker 1: all that work. And some people say, you know what,
Speaker 1: they actually pretty much lifted the design from an entirely
Speaker 1: different car manufacturer. And there's a lot of back and
Speaker 1: forth online in various car forums about this. So I
Speaker 1: just don't know the real truth here. There's way too
Speaker 1: much conflicting information out there, and I don't know who's
Speaker 1: right and who's wrong. So rather than report on all
Speaker 1: of that, we'll just say there's some controversy anyway. So
Speaker 1: about a year after Luigi Segre had first met with
Speaker 1: Wilhelm Karmen about this project, he presented Carmen with the
Speaker 1: prototype and Carmen loved it, and he immediately said that
Speaker 1: he wanted his company to produce the bodies for this
Speaker 1: type of car using Gias design. But there was still
Speaker 1: one little piece of the puzzle that was missing. Which
Speaker 1: was the fact that they needed to get the Chassiss
Speaker 1: from Volkswagen. So Carmen goes to nord Off and he
Speaker 1: pitches this idea, and according to Carmen, I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is actually true, but it's according to his
Speaker 1: own records of it. Nordof's first reaction upon seeing the
Speaker 1: Carmen Gia prototype was to say that it was really pretty,
Speaker 1: but way too expensive, and Carmen then said, I haven't
Speaker 1: even mentioned a price yet. How can you say it's
Speaker 1: too expensive if you haven't heard what I think it
Speaker 1: will cost. So again, I have no clue if that
Speaker 1: particular part of the story is actually true or not,
Speaker 1: but what is indisputable is that the various parties were
Speaker 1: able to come to an agreement, and thus the Volkswagen
Speaker 1: Carmen Gia was born. Like the Type one, it had
Speaker 1: a rear mounted air cooled engine, but it definitely looked
Speaker 1: more sleek than the Beatle. Over the lifetime of its production,
Speaker 1: which spanned from nineteen fifty five to nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: it would come with four different engine capacities, so at
Speaker 1: the low end you had twelve hundred c c twelve
Speaker 1: cubic centimeters or one point two leaders, and you got
Speaker 1: all the way up to sixteen hundred cc or one
Speaker 1: point six leaders. Now I'm not really a car guy,
Speaker 1: but I do have to say there's a lot about
Speaker 1: the Carmen Gia that I find particularly appealing. It's just,
Speaker 1: like I said, cute. Plus the fact that it relied
Speaker 1: it on the same chassis and style of engine as
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen Beetle meant that it was relatively easy to
Speaker 1: maintain and to work on, which is becoming pretty darn
Speaker 1: rare these days with modern vehicles because they're incorporating more
Speaker 1: and more computer technology and proprietary bolts and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: it's harder for you to be able to work on
Speaker 1: a car that you get for yourself. So this hearkens
Speaker 1: back to an age where people could actually do their
Speaker 1: own maintenance on their vehicles if they had to know
Speaker 1: how and the desire to do so. Oh and one
Speaker 1: other thing. Uh. The name Carmen Gia would also be
Speaker 1: used by mel Brooks as the name for a supporting
Speaker 1: character in his film The Producers, though in that case
Speaker 1: the character's name was spelled as Carmen c A R
Speaker 1: M E n UM. However, I love that movie, so
Speaker 1: I had to give that shout out. So by the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen fifties, Volkswagen had its workhorse Type one that
Speaker 1: was doing well throughout Europe and was starting to pick
Speaker 1: up sales in the United States. It was starting to
Speaker 1: get popular. The Type two past one million cars produced
Speaker 1: by nineteen fifty five, so it very quickly became a
Speaker 1: pretty popular workhorse itself, and the karmen Gia switched things
Speaker 1: up by adding a sporty option. Volkswagen's motto around this
Speaker 1: time was it is a member of my family. No.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot more than the motto I
Speaker 1: remember with Volkswagen, but that we'll have to say for
Speaker 1: the next episode. Anyway, the company appeared to be fulfilling
Speaker 1: the initial promise of being the people's car. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, Volkswagen began producing a two wheel drive convertible
Speaker 1: called the Type one eight one, that's what was called internally,
Speaker 1: and it was meant as a vehicle for the Army
Speaker 1: of West Germany, and it looked like a descendant of
Speaker 1: the old Kubu Wagan that Volkswagen had been producing in
Speaker 1: World War Two. Under the surface of this angular and
Speaker 1: flat metal sheets that made up the body. The type
Speaker 1: was really similar to the Type one and Type two
Speaker 1: mechanical systems, so very similar chassis, very similar engine. It's sported,
Speaker 1: removable and interchangeable doors, so you can take the doors
Speaker 1: off the side of the thing if you wanted, kind
Speaker 1: of like a jeep, uh, and you didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about which ones where the front doors or the
Speaker 1: back doors because they were all interchangeable. The windshield itself
Speaker 1: could also be folded down, so you could drive this
Speaker 1: thing with no windshield up if you wanted, and you
Speaker 1: didn't mind the taste of bugs. They would all go
Speaker 1: on the market for consumers as well as the military,
Speaker 1: and here in the United States we called it the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Thing the Thing. You should look that up on
Speaker 1: Google Images if you haven't seen this before, because it's
Speaker 1: pretty funky looking to The company stopped producing them in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, so there hasn't been a new Volkswagen
Speaker 1: Thing for a few decades. Uh. They're still collectors who
Speaker 1: set by and sell the things. Um, they go for
Speaker 1: around sixteen thousand thousand dollars. From what I've seen, it's
Speaker 1: pretty expensive for a car that's that old and is
Speaker 1: not like a sports car, luxury car or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's more of a curiosity. Also in nineteen Volkswagen with
Speaker 1: debut it's Type three vehicle. Now remember Type one were Beatles,
Speaker 1: Type two were the Volkswagen busses. So what the heck
Speaker 1: was Type three. Well, it's a compact car that, while
Speaker 1: larger than the Beetle, still wasn't very big. It was
Speaker 1: still a pretty compact vehicle. It was meant to provide
Speaker 1: more space in the car for passengers and for luggage
Speaker 1: while maintaining many of the common features of the previous types.
Speaker 1: That meant the engines in the cars were still uh
Speaker 1: air cooled, they were still rear mounted, but they were
Speaker 1: a little bit bigger, you know, had a larger engine
Speaker 1: volume than the Beatles typically did, and they were in
Speaker 1: a slightly different configuration. You see, they were in what
Speaker 1: some people call a pancake engine style, and that was
Speaker 1: because it was meant to take up less vertical space
Speaker 1: it took. It was a flat sort of engine that
Speaker 1: could fit underneath the trunk space of the back of
Speaker 1: the car. So this actually meant that the designers could
Speaker 1: create trunk space both in the front and the back
Speaker 1: of the Type three vehicles. You could open up the
Speaker 1: front and that was storage space, and you could open
Speaker 1: up the back and there was more storage space underneath,
Speaker 1: which was a hinged panel, and if you lift up
Speaker 1: the hinged panel, you would actually be looking at the engine.
Speaker 1: So it had a lot more storage space than your
Speaker 1: typical volkswagons did at the time. Uh there were three
Speaker 1: main body styles that made up the Type three chassis.
Speaker 1: There was the fast back, the square back, and the
Speaker 1: notch back. Now in the United States, only the square
Speaker 1: back and fastback versions were imported officially, and they became
Speaker 1: popular cars among certain subcultures, particularly the surfing community. They
Speaker 1: became really popular with surfers. Now today they are sought
Speaker 1: after by collectors because they haven't been made in decades.
Speaker 1: They they Volkswagen stopped making Type three cars in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, so a lot of them just aren't in
Speaker 1: working order anymore. So to find one that still works
Speaker 1: that's in good condition is considered a rarity, and the
Speaker 1: collectors eagerly pay lots of money to get hold of
Speaker 1: these cars. In the mid nineteen sixties, Volkswagen leader Nordhoff
Speaker 1: led the company to acquire Audi, which was previously owned
Speaker 1: by Daimler Benz. Audi has its own rather complicated story.
Speaker 1: It was founded in the early twentieth century by a
Speaker 1: guy named August Horch, who founded a couple of different
Speaker 1: automobile companies, but Audi was the one that really succeeded.
Speaker 1: It produced its first car in nineteen ten, and over
Speaker 1: the following two decades it would merge with other automotive companies.
Speaker 1: I mean seriously. Tracing the history of some of these
Speaker 1: car companies is maddening because of the various mergers and
Speaker 1: acquisitions and changes in ownership. And complicating matters is that,
Speaker 1: like Volkswagen, Audi produced vehicles for the Access Powers during
Speaker 1: World War Two, but unlike Volkswagen, when Germany got split
Speaker 1: into two countries into East and West Germany, Aldi's headquarters
Speaker 1: happened to be in East Germany, which fell under the
Speaker 1: control of the Soviet Union. So that meant that AUDI
Speaker 1: as a company essentially dissolved at that point, but the
Speaker 1: executives were determined to bring it back to launch it
Speaker 1: again in a less hostile environment. They established a new
Speaker 1: center of operations in Bavaria in West Germany, at a
Speaker 1: manufacturing facility that had previously made spare parts for the company.
Speaker 1: Now it was going to be the center of their operations.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty nine, Daimler Benz purchased an eighty seven
Speaker 1: percent steak in Audi, but didn't really have a whole
Speaker 1: lot to do with their new purchase. Over time, Volkswagen
Speaker 1: acquired a steak which was up to a fifty percent stake.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, when Volkswagen made a move to
Speaker 1: buy the manufacturing facilities from Audi, the plan wasn't really
Speaker 1: to nurture Audi into a luxury car brand of its own. Instead,
Speaker 1: Volkswagen intended to turn Audi's manufacturing facilities to the purpose
Speaker 1: of building yet more Volkswagen Beetle, you know, the good
Speaker 1: old type one. The Audi executives, who had worked so
Speaker 1: hard to keep their company going even after losing their
Speaker 1: production facilities to East Germany, weren't going to give up
Speaker 1: so easily, so they did something sneaky. They secretly developed
Speaker 1: a prototype for what would become the first Audi one hundred.
Speaker 1: That was a full sized sedan, and it aimed at
Speaker 1: a slightly higher level upscale market than the Beatle did
Speaker 1: so for people who had a little bit more income
Speaker 1: and they wanted to have more space, you know, in
Speaker 1: a larger vehicle. They pitched it to Volkswagen head Nordoff
Speaker 1: once they had built the prototype, again doing it completely
Speaker 1: without authorization. Nordhoff was actually impressed, and he agreed to
Speaker 1: add the vehicle to Volkswagen's production plans under the Audi
Speaker 1: brand name, and so Audi the Auto brand thus survived.
Speaker 1: By this time, there were people in and around Volkswagen
Speaker 1: who were growing concerned about the company. Nordoff was frequently
Speaker 1: targeted by critic They said that he was just being
Speaker 1: too conservative and he wasn't moving quickly enough to establish
Speaker 1: new Volkswagen models and and car types. There was a
Speaker 1: worry that the company was far too dependent upon the
Speaker 1: aging Type one beatle that was quickly getting left behind
Speaker 1: by other car companies. Meanwhile, Nordoff was considering the head
Speaker 1: of Volkswagen of America, a guy named Dr. Carl Hahn,
Speaker 1: to become his successor. Nordoff was planning to retire. However,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't happen. Nordoff would have a heart attack in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, and he would pass away the following
Speaker 1: year in April of nineteen sixty eight. That was the
Speaker 1: year he had actually intended to retire. He was going
Speaker 1: to retire at the end of sixty eight, and the
Speaker 1: company's board of directors had already chosen his successor, Kurt Lots,
Speaker 1: who was going to take over the company upon Nordoff's retirement,
Speaker 1: but obviously had to take on the job six months
Speaker 1: earlier than planned. During World War Two, Lots had served
Speaker 1: as a general staff off serve for the Luftwaffe. After
Speaker 1: the war, he worked at the German subsidiary of a
Speaker 1: Swiss electrical company, eventually rising to the level of chairman,
Speaker 1: before differences between Lots and the leaders on the Swiss
Speaker 1: parent company prompted Lots to leave the company. He was
Speaker 1: brought into Volkswagen with the intent of replacing Nordof upon
Speaker 1: Nordoff's retirement. As I mentioned, but he would take the
Speaker 1: job much earlier, and so here's a person from outside
Speaker 1: the organization coming in to take over the reins. Lots
Speaker 1: of vision from Volkswagen was to make much larger steps
Speaker 1: away from the company's dependence on the Type one Beatle,
Speaker 1: and so he started to authorize lots of new car models,
Speaker 1: both under Volkswagen and under the Audi brands. He wanted
Speaker 1: to consider other designs and aimed for different markets. Europe
Speaker 1: was a much different place in the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: than it had been just after World War Two, and
Speaker 1: Volkswagen's international markets were growing in importance. In fact, Volkswagen
Speaker 1: had been building assembly plants in places like Australia, Brazil,
Speaker 1: Mexico in order to meet that demand, and the US
Speaker 1: market in particular was really growing pretty quickly. One interesting fact,
Speaker 1: just as Lats was looking to move away from that
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Beetle, the car hit its peak popularity in the
Speaker 1: United States. It would mark the year when the U
Speaker 1: s would buy the most Volkswagen Beetles in the history
Speaker 1: of the country, you know, having that availability. But Lawns
Speaker 1: was right that sticking to the old type one was
Speaker 1: not going to be a sustainable business model for the
Speaker 1: long run. In nineteen sixty nine, Lots oversaw the acquisition
Speaker 1: of another company called N s U Motor in Varka.
Speaker 1: Like Carmen, this company didn't start out in the auto business. Instead,
Speaker 1: a German businessman named Christianne Schmidt founded it back in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, and it was initially a company that
Speaker 1: made knitting machines, but over time the company would relocate,
Speaker 1: it would grow, it would evolve, and it started to
Speaker 1: change its manufacturing acesses to build other stuff because clearly
Speaker 1: knitting machines were not going to remain relevant forever, and
Speaker 1: so they started making stuff like bicycles, and then motorcycles
Speaker 1: and then eventually cars. The company didn't have an entirely
Speaker 1: smooth history. In the nineteen thirties, facing financial crisis, NSU
Speaker 1: was forced to sell its auto manufacturing facility in uh
Speaker 1: Heilbraun to Fiat, for example, and so Fiat and NSU
Speaker 1: worked together on several vehicles. Like all manufacturing facilities in Europe,
Speaker 1: it changed over to produce supplies for the armed forces
Speaker 1: during World War Two, and after the war it went
Speaker 1: back into manufacturing vehicles for civilians, including motorcycles and cars.
Speaker 1: The company wasn't a rough patch in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties when Volkswagen acquired it, merging it with the Audi
Speaker 1: division to create Audi n s U. The NSU brand
Speaker 1: would only stick around a few more years before being
Speaker 1: discontinued completely in nineteen seventy seven. All Right, I've got
Speaker 1: a little more to say about Volkswagen's transition during the seventies.
Speaker 1: After we come Back in nineteen one, Curt Lots, who
Speaker 1: had only led the company since nineteen eight when Heinrich
Speaker 1: Nordoff had passed away, stepped down as the head of Volkswagen.
Speaker 1: Lots had come into conflict with the powerful trade unions
Speaker 1: that still owned a stake in the company, and those
Speaker 1: differences were insurmountable. Lots Is politics and the union politics
Speaker 1: were pretty much in opposition with one another, and Lots
Speaker 1: just didn't have the ability to override the trade unions.
Speaker 1: They just they held too much ownership of the company,
Speaker 1: so he couldn't really do what he wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and he was more or less forced to resign. His
Speaker 1: replacement was Rudolph Lightning, and unlike Lots, Lighting had been
Speaker 1: with the company for nearly thirty years. He had started
Speaker 1: his career at Volkswagen in the nineteen forties and had
Speaker 1: been in charge of establishing an assembly line process when
Speaker 1: Volkswagen was emerging from the wreckage of World War Two.
Speaker 1: He was known to be a tough boss, which is
Speaker 1: putting it lightly. He was a guy who would monitor
Speaker 1: employees coming in at the morning and making sure he
Speaker 1: made note of anyone who showed up late to work.
Speaker 1: He had a reputation for holding people accountable for their deliverables,
Speaker 1: which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the stories of
Speaker 1: Red made it sound like he wasn't exactly approachable. His
Speaker 1: goal was to have a smooth running operation, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't shy about addressing issues he saw as an impediment
Speaker 1: to that goal. So, in other words, he was a
Speaker 1: tough customer, you a tough cookie. Lighting concluded that the
Speaker 1: company had perhaps aired too far in an attempt to
Speaker 1: get away from the Volkswagen Beetle dependency. He did agree
Speaker 1: that it didn't make sense to stay dependent upon the
Speaker 1: Type one, but he judged that Volkswagen and its subsidiaries
Speaker 1: had developed and launched cars at great expense, and those
Speaker 1: cars had limited value on the market. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the company was backing too many ideas without really testing
Speaker 1: whether or not those ideas had any merit. So he
Speaker 1: dedicated the company to a more focused approach when it
Speaker 1: came to developing plans for cars. Lighting also wanted to
Speaker 1: maximize efficiency by using the same basic components for all
Speaker 1: vehicles produced by Volkswagen. Doing so would cut back drastically
Speaker 1: on costs. There would be differences from model to model.
Speaker 1: You know, things would look very different, but underneath they
Speaker 1: would share much of the same bones right, the same structure.
Speaker 1: This is pretty much the same strategy Volkswagen had employed
Speaker 1: would introduced the Volkswagen Bus decades earlier. It was in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two that Volkswagen announced it had produced more
Speaker 1: Type one vehicles the Volkswagen Beetle, than Ford had made
Speaker 1: of Model T cars, which meant that the Volkswagen Beetle
Speaker 1: would become the most popular or most produced car in
Speaker 1: history at that time anyway, And the following year, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, Volkswagen would introduce a new car that
Speaker 1: was a bigger departure for the company, and this would
Speaker 1: be the Volkswagen Pasade. Now nineteen seventy three in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four would be really tough years for Europe in
Speaker 1: general and Volkswagen in particular. There was an economic recession
Speaker 1: that was hitting Europe pretty hard and auto sales were
Speaker 1: down as a result, and part of the cause for
Speaker 1: this was the oil crisis of the early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So while Volkswagen was introducing a new type of car,
Speaker 1: it was also dealing with disappointing sales figures, and it
Speaker 1: was pretty rough. The Passade, as I mentioned, marked a
Speaker 1: departure for Volkswagen. Now, beneath the exterior, the Pasade was
Speaker 1: essentially the same as an Audi eighty sedan, and remember
Speaker 1: Audi was now part of the Volkswagen group, but the
Speaker 1: style was different from all other Volkswagen vehicles. All of
Speaker 1: the previous Volkswagen vehicles had been rear engine, rear wheel
Speaker 1: drive vehicles. The Pasade was and is to this day,
Speaker 1: a front engine, front wheel drive vehicle, and it was
Speaker 1: much larger. Is a much bigger car than what Volkswagen
Speaker 1: was typically used to producing, and considered to be a
Speaker 1: large family vehicle rather than a compact car. So in
Speaker 1: North America, the original Passade would be called the Volkswagen Dasher.
Speaker 1: Now this type of vehicle wasn't that different from the
Speaker 1: cars that Audi was producing, but that was under the
Speaker 1: Audi brand, not the Volkswagen brand, so that's why it
Speaker 1: was a pretty big change for Volkswagen. The Pasade didn't
Speaker 1: immediately save the company, however. The financial crisis was hitting
Speaker 1: it hard and the company posted a loss in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four that was equivalent to three hundred thirty six
Speaker 1: million dollars. Now, in nineteen seventy four, I mean even today,
Speaker 1: that's a princely some the nineteen seventy four that was
Speaker 1: a pretty huge amount. And to make matters worse, it
Speaker 1: marked the first time Volkswagen had ever experienced a loss. Ever,
Speaker 1: so it's first loss was a considerable one. Lighting would
Speaker 1: end up getting a lot of pressure and would end
Speaker 1: stepping down as the managing director of the company in
Speaker 1: early nineteen He was replaced by another guy named Tony Schmucker,
Speaker 1: who had previously worked for Ford's operations in Germany. So
Speaker 1: again Schmucker came in from outside of Volkswagen. He was
Speaker 1: not someone who had been working at the company for
Speaker 1: a while. Before his departure, Lighting had overseen the development
Speaker 1: of the Volkswagen Golf, also known as the Volkswagen Rabbit
Speaker 1: in America. This car, which still has models that come
Speaker 1: out today, was meant as a replacement for the Volkswagen Beetles.
Speaker 1: So this was another compact car that was meant to
Speaker 1: take the same place in the market as the Beatle.
Speaker 1: It looks very different from the Beatle, but it was
Speaker 1: meant to aim at that same sort of driver, like
Speaker 1: the Pasade as a front engine and front wheel drive.
Speaker 1: It's smaller than the Pasade, but it would ultimately become
Speaker 1: Volkswagen's best selling model. At the time, no one knew
Speaker 1: if it was going to be successful or not, And
Speaker 1: based on my research, I'd say much of the losses
Speaker 1: that Lkswagen experienced were really outside of Rudolph Lighting's control,
Speaker 1: whereas the decisions he made would end up leading to
Speaker 1: some of the company's biggest gains later on. So while
Speaker 1: he his tenure was short, and while he took a
Speaker 1: lot of blame for the losses that the company experienced, uh,
Speaker 1: it may be more honest to say that he helped
Speaker 1: save the company. He just wasn't around long enough to
Speaker 1: see the results of that work payoff. Schmooker would end
Speaker 1: up laying off twenty five thousand employees. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: he shut down an assembly plant in Australia. He almost
Speaker 1: did the same to the manufacturing facilities in Mexico and Brazil,
Speaker 1: but instead decided to reorganize and restructure them and make
Speaker 1: them more efficient. In ninety eight, he actually would do
Speaker 1: the reverse because now the company's fortunes were on the
Speaker 1: rise again, so he oversaw the opening of a manufacturing
Speaker 1: facility in Pennsylvania as in the United States of America.
Speaker 1: This would make Volkswagen the first foreign car company to
Speaker 1: open up an assembly plant in the US in nearly
Speaker 1: fifty years. The reason they did this is because again,
Speaker 1: the United States was becoming an enormous customer for Volkswagen,
Speaker 1: like a huge market. They had seen incredible success with
Speaker 1: the Beatle and the Golf was starting to take off
Speaker 1: as well, so they wanted to build a facility in
Speaker 1: the same country where they were having a lot of customers,
Speaker 1: So that's why they did that. Now, between Lighting's decisions
Speaker 1: to invest in the Gulf and Schmooker's cost cutting measures,
Speaker 1: the company returned to being profitable in short order. They
Speaker 1: were making a profit again by nineteen seventy five, so
Speaker 1: they were able to recover from the massive crisis of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy four. The Golf was
Speaker 1: poised to take up the mantle that had previously been
Speaker 1: worn by the Beetle, and Volkswagen still had a lot
Speaker 1: of obstacles to overcome. One big one was that Japanese
Speaker 1: automakers were starting to make some serious progress in markets
Speaker 1: outside of Japan itself. Japanese cars were starting to become popular.
Speaker 1: They were known for being inexpensive and reliable, and so
Speaker 1: this was a serious threat to Volkswagen. Uh So that
Speaker 1: became a new source of competition for the company. Schmucker
Speaker 1: would remain the head of Volkswagen until nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: at which point he was forced to resign due to
Speaker 1: declining health. His successor was the man whom Heinrich Nordhoff
Speaker 1: had wanted to lead the company all the way back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, this being Dr Carl Hahn, the
Speaker 1: previous head of Volkswagen of America. He had been away
Speaker 1: from Volkswagen for several years prior to nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: but he did come back to assume the role of
Speaker 1: chairman of the board. Also around that time, the company
Speaker 1: signed a cooperation agreement with a Spanish carmaker called Seat.
Speaker 1: That cooperation would blossom over the years, with the Volkswagen
Speaker 1: taking a majority steak in Seat in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: before acquiring the company entirely in nineteen nine. All Right,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to kind of wrap up this episode
Speaker 1: at this point because we still have more to talk about,
Speaker 1: and I want to make sure that I cover all
Speaker 1: of it, so we're going to have a part three
Speaker 1: to this series, so we'll talk about other cars that
Speaker 1: Volkswagen produced after this time, stuff like the Jetta, which
Speaker 1: I know my producer Tari wants me to talk about
Speaker 1: because she used to drive one. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the new Beatle, the the resurgence of the Volkswagen Beetle
Speaker 1: when it came back in the nineteen nineties under a
Speaker 1: new style. And we'll talk about Volkswagen's plans for the
Speaker 1: future with it's it's uh, you know, it's it's experimental
Speaker 1: steps into electric car territory, as well as of course
Speaker 1: the controversy around the diesel emissions testing scandal. So we
Speaker 1: have all of that to look forward to in the
Speaker 1: next episode. But if you have any requests or suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes, you can get in touch with me
Speaker 1: and let me know what those are. The best way
Speaker 1: to do it is on social media over on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter, we are tech Stuff h s W. So
Speaker 1: just let us know over there and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Y. Tech Stuff is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
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