Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle

by Andrea Hiott

  At the time, the ad agency standard was to departmentalize work as much as possible. The accounts department acquired and decided on the companies and campaigns. On another floor, the copywriter received his or her account name and the “angle” that was to be used, an angle usually derived from research purchased from polling companies and focus groups. The copywriters would come up with the copy, then send it to another floor where the art department would give it images. This system was highly comparable to the automobile assembly line, and the process had been honed to the point where the guy putting the doors on, so to speak, wouldn’t even talk to the guy designing those doors, or the person who had crafted them—it was all unnecessary. And it all worked well enough. But it wasn’t good enough for Bill.

  DDB wouldn’t have any such floors. Bill wanted the agency to be a place that nurtured interaction, relationships like the one he and Rand had started and that he and Gage were cultivating. That meant doing away with certain departmental walls and allowing for more communication. Bill realized that juices flow when there is trial and error and messiness and moments of transcendence, things that come from two people interacting in a room, so he put the copywriter and the art director together as a team. It was a simple move, but until Bill, it had never been done before, and the very idea of it—common as it might seem to us now—was considered strange (at best). As Robert Gage described it: “Two people who respect each other sit in the same room for a length of time and arrive at a state of free association, where the mention of one idea will lead to another idea, and then to another.”4 In this way, every ad was about “the combination of the visual and the words coming together and forming a third bigger thing.” If the writer and the artist interacted, then the copy and the image of the ad would ultimately interact on the page, creating a stronger finished piece. They would use research. They would have their own offices and desks. Reason would certainly have its place, but they wouldn’t keep churning out different sizes and shapes of that same happy-world ad that was so common. “Logic and overanalysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea,” Bill said. “It’s like love—the more you analyze it, the faster it disappears.”

  Thus, Bill developed a philosophy of sorts, a philosophy that resulted in a totally new structure, much like Nordhoff’s presence was changing the Volkswagen factory during those same years. And if industry was a matter of technical innovation and efficiency, then media (at least as DDB saw it) was a matter of translating that innovation into a language that the everyday customer could understand. Bill’s philosophies were ultimately shifting the very founding dynamics of advertising, just as Nordhoff was attempting to redefine what it meant to be a German business. If it worked, it would be revolutionary. If.

  At the beginning of 1947, Porsche was still in a lonely Dijon cell, and so was his son-in-law, Anton. They were still being held without trial, without any clear charges, and the rest of the Porsche family was still trying in earnest to get them released. In the months since Ferdinand and Anton had been transferred into their solitary, cold, medieval cells, Ferry and Louise and Rabe had continued their convoluted negotiations with the French. In the spring of 1947, a deal was finally struck: The French authorities would let the two men go, but only if they were paid 500,000 francs for each man.

  This felt like an impossible sum in 1947—such money simply could not be found in one lump sum, especially given the conversion rate. But it was the only option, and necessity tends to have its way. Amazingly, they managed to make the deal and scrape the funds together in July, thanks to the help they received from friends and colleagues living in France. A French Grand Prix driver named Raymond Sommer and a French automotive journalist named Charles Faroux helped to get messages to and from Ferdinand and his family. They also got food packages to Porsche and Anton and helped in the negotiations for their release. Once the French had agreed to let the men go on bail, other automotive men helped Ferry secure a large contract to make a car for Italian tycoon Piero Dusio. He commissioned Ferry and the Porsche team to design an all-wheel drive Formula One racing car, the Cisitalia1 360 (and it turned out to be a very beautiful car indeed). The contract paid about $62,000 in today’s terms, but at the time that was more than enough to cover the one million francs that constituted the bail. Even so, it was impossible for Ferry to get those funds transferred to France by himself, so the French Grand Prix driver Sommer served as the middleman and the Italians and French worked together to finally get the money delivered. It was less bail than ransom, really, as there had been no trial and Porsche and Anton had been held illegally the whole time. Even today, the details about this imprisonment are still murky, as the French files of those years have yet to be released. But such things didn’t matter to the Porsche family: at that point, all they wanted was to get Ferdinand and Anton home again.

  On August 1, 1947, well over two years after the end of the war, Porsche and Piëch were released. But Porsche emerged a broken man. All that exuberance and fierceness that had so characterized him before the war was lost, and it was clear that he would not resume his running of their company; those responsibilities would stay with Louise, Ferry, and Rabe, though for now Porsche would remain the company’s figurehead. Now that they were all back together as one family, there were many things to be done. One such order of business was how to deal with the Volkswagen plant.

  By early 1948, with Nordhoff managing the factory and with cars being produced and sold, it had become clear that a new agreement needed to be reached between Porsche and Volkswagen; it was his car they were selling after all, and it had come from the Porsche family firm. The old contracts that had been decided on between the Porsche family and the company in 1943 were completely outdated. Thanks to Louise, Ferry, and Rabe, the Porsche firm had done well in the years since the war. It now had over 300 employees, and many contracts abroad. Ferry had also been working on a new kind of car, and he needed to get things settled with Volkswagen before he could proceed in producing it. Upon being contacted by Ferry, Heinrich Nordhoff made immediate plans to go to Austria and speak with the Porsche family. They had to meet in Austria because Ferdinand Porsche was still not allowed to enter Germany. It would be 1949 before the Allies would allow him to return.

  Ferry needed cash because the car he’d just designed was the remarkable Porsche 356, and he wanted to produce it, as the idea for the car had finally jelled in his mind while he was working on the Cisitalia project. The 356 Roadster (known as No. 1, and receiving its permit on June 8, 1948) had an aluminum body, was 35 hp, and could go about 85 mph. It was based on the Volkswagen platform, sharing its flat-four engine, gearbox, and suspension system, but the 356 was given a sportier shape and line. It was the first sports car in the way we think of sports cars today, not necessarily built only for the racetrack but for people to drive on the autobahns and streets. It was also the first car of what is today the very respected and elite Porsche brand. It was a landmark in Porsche history, and it is telling that the decision to proceed with production of the car came from Ferry, not from his father. Ferdinand Porsche had designed a car to be built in the factory in Wolfsburg under Nazi control. Now Ferry had taken that design, mixed it with other ideas his father had for making a race car, and turned it into one the Porsche company would produce on its own. When Ferry first showed the design and roadgoing chassis of the 356 to his father in February 1948, it’s easy to imagine that he was nervous in the way only a son can be, a feeling mixed with excitement, but also frustration and fear.

  Porsche looked at the car long and hard. The two men walked around it together quietly, both of their eyes alight. There wasn’t a thing about it he would change, Ferdinand Porsche finally told his son: “If I’d created it myself,2 this is exactly how I would have wanted it.” It’s hard to imagine a greater compliment for a son, or one more fitting for that particular moment, a moment when the elder Porsche was clearly handing over the reins to his talented heir. In his father’s absence, Ferry had shown that he could sta
nd on his own.

  Thus when Nordhoff, Ferry, and Ferdinand met at the edge of Austria near Berchtesgaden in the late summer of 1948 to discuss where things stood between Volkswagen and Porsche, it was Ferry (with the guiding help and advice of his sister, Louise) who was essentially in charge. And yet it was the presence of the elder Porsche that set the mood of the meeting. Nordhoff, the man who had criticized Porsche’s Volkswagen design many years ago, was now both humble and filled with words of praise. The little car was the center of both men’s existence; Porsche had given it birth, the British had adopted it for a while, and now Nordhoff was steering it toward the new international commercial world that was beginning to emerge. It seemed the old was indeed giving way to the new, and while change is often subtle, this was a moment when the very near past and the present were in stark contrast, a break highlighted all the more by the fact that Nordhoff and the Porsches met near Berchtesgaden, a beautiful Alpine village where Adolf Hitler (just years before) had occupied his famed mountain home.

  Ferry with his sons and his “baby,” the Porsche 356. (photo credit 37.1)

  That meeting in the Alps was only a preliminary one, arranged more of out of respect for Porsche than of out of a sense of business. A few months later, Ferry would travel alone to Bad Reichenhall, a spa town in upper Bavaria, leaving his father at home, and meet with Nordhoff and their respective lawyers to sign the final plan. Ferry liked Nordhoff, and he would later write in his autobiography that the meeting had been easy: The two men immediately saw eye to eye. Indeed, Ferry and Heinrich were not strangers. They knew each other from the days of the war, as they had both been part of the small and elite German automotive world. Both had seen the Nazi machine up close, and both were keenly aware of the new conditions they now found themselves in, and they wanted to make the best of them.

  Ferdinand and Ferry look at sketches of the Volkswagen Beetle in Stuttgart. By the time this picture was taken (1950), the VW was almost entirely in the hands of Nordhoff and was slowly beginning to motorize the German population. (photo credit 37.2)

  In that sense, they both understood that the Volkswagen company and the Porsche company needed each other in order to be strong, and they each respected what the other man was bringing to the table. Together they decided that the Porsches would not build cars for any company that might be likely to come into competition with the Volkswagen, which was an essential point for Nordhoff. The Porsche patent for the Volkswagen—and the patents for its parts—could be used by the company in Wolfsburg free of charge. In turn, the Porsches would get royalties on every VW that Wolfsburg made and sold: In effect, VW would become Porsche’s biggest client. The Porsche company, and any cars it made, were also entitled to use any of the Volkswagen service centers and chains. This would be a big incentive for the emerging Porsche firm in coming years as the Porsche 356, the car that Ferry created using his father’s original Volkswagen design, was soon to be presented and sold. In an unshakable way, the original Volkswagen and the original Porsche would always be a bit like brother and sister, each eventually starting families of their own. (The 356 would soon lead to the Porsche 911, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful cars in the world, a car that, like the 356, was strongly modeled on Ferdinand Porsche’s original VW design.) The sweet but sleek 356 was presented in its first auto show in Geneva in 1949. A new generation was emerging now, and in the tradition of innovation, the Porsches were again creating something the European world had never seen.

  A year later, in 1950, Ferdinand Porsche and Ghislaine set off with Ferry’s new model of the 356 for the Paris Auto Show. Porsche’s family was worried about him taking such a long trip, but Ferdinand insisted that he be the one to go. For his part, Ghislaine was happy to have his uncle back, even if he now found himself having to care for the aging man in a whole new way. At that year’s Paris Exhibition—the same one where Porsche and the American Max Hoffman would fortuitously meet, resulting in the Porsche sports car’s United States debut—Ferdinand Porsche and Ghislaine showed Ferry’s 356 with pride, though the decoration of the exhibit itself was sparse: just two cars and a banner overhead that read “1900 Porsche 1950.”

  As he and Ghislaine sat there together in the two folding chairs Ghislaine had brought along, perhaps Porsche recalled that day so long ago in 1900 when he’d been just starting out, a young man working for Jacob Lohner and showing his first car in this very same city, his future still uncertain but bright, his energy and ideas overflowing in all directions. Now he was an old man. The world had changed dramatically during his long life, and it was still changing. The rest of the twentieth century would see the realization of the ideas about mobility and speed that Ferdinand Porsche had been so determined to explore as a young man. The elder Porsche would not live to see the mass motorization of Europe in full, but the importance of his car, and his idea, had indeed proven itself: Porsche’s intuition had been the right one. His passion for the automobile had started when he was a young man, in a time when very few people believed that the automobile would one day be the most ubiquitous and essential form of transportation. Porsche’s passion for cars and movement had begun before the turn of the century, and now, as the 1950s were dawning, that passion was about to spread and reach millions.

  The Porsche 356 at the 1950 Paris Auto Show. (photo credit 37.3)

  Perhaps there was something comforting in seeing the automobile on the verge of taking off, especially after having watched its changes and evolutions, that process of growth that ran parallel to his own. Porsche was no longer as quick or as tough as he’d once been, but the importance of the automobile in his life had taken on a potent and tender tone. He had come to the end of his life, but in many ways the Porsche legacy was only just beginning: After all, only now was there a car being sold on the market bearing solely the Porsche name. He could not have known it at the time, but that name would soon grow into one of the most respected and admired automotive companies in the world: Today it’s hard to find a person anywhere who has not heard of a Porsche. And it is even harder to find a person who has not heard of the Volkswagen Bug, a car that may not carry his name, but certainly carries his legacy.

  Ferdinand Porsche in his Beetle. (photo credit 37.4)

  Not all of Germany had supported Hitler hook, line, and sinker: Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, there were those who had indeed resisted and dared to speak out against him. And, perhaps surprisingly, one of the more vocal anti-Nazi groups was composed of a handful of Germany’s key economists. A man named Walter Eucken, the son of a respected German philosopher and Nobel laureate, was the dean of the University of Freiburg during Hitler’s reign. Eucken and most of his colleagues resisted the Nazis—some eventually having to flee because of it—and they came to be known as the “Freiburg School.” Men like Franz Boehm, Erich Preiser, and Wilhelm Roepke were all part of this school, and they persisted, even in the midst of a Nazi regime and war, in designing what would eventually become the economic heart of West Germany. It was a system designed not on the teachings of any German thinker, but rather on those of the Scottish economist Adam Smith.

  These German economists, all writing and publishing their papers as early as 1937, were aware of what Heinrich Nordhoff’s professor Georg Schlesinger had been aware of—namely, that a change in labor division would change the economy. In their eyes, to accommodate such fluctuations, an economic system needed to be both responsible and flexible, ordered and yet not restrictive to the natural flow. Around the same time Hitler had been coming into his full power, the men in Freiburg were creating an economic system they called the Soziale Marktwirtschaft, or Social Market Economy.1 They wanted their “social market” to be a version of Smith’s “free market”—things would be bought and sold internationally without tariffs and governmental control. However, they also realized that because humans are imperfect, part of the order meant a certain amount of government or societal action that could prevent unhealthy forms of monopoly and keep taxes fair an
d flexible as the market changed—but the regulation itself would also have to be balanced and checked.

  Needless to say, such ideas were in stark contrast to the Four Year Plan and economic policy of the Nazis, which encouraged excessive cartels and assumed command control. The Social Market Economy was more akin to economic developments that were happening in America around the same time, headed by men like Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. But still, it was not the same. It was a plan of economic liberalism, thus the emphasis was on freedom—but it was also an economy that was meant to be observed, contradicting the idea that economic freedom requires total deregulation.

  One young German economist whose face would become synonymous with this new “capitalism with a conscience” theory was Ludwig Erhard. Erhard was a plump man with eyes spread far apart and an avuncular smile that could be mischievous and comforting all at once. He had been influenced by both the unregulated free market ideas of Adam Smith as well as by the more regulated ideas of J. M. Keynes. And while his economic stance was nuanced, his political one was not: he had not become a member of the Nazi Party, and his stance against them had been a public one. He had refused to join the Nazi Association of University Teachers, thus being denied a position at his university, and—so long as the Nazis were in power—kept from advancing in his field. Though he did find a long and lasting job at the Institute for Market Research in Nuremberg, his outspoken dislike of the Nazi Party meant he could not be offered a management position, even though his skills were above those he worked for. To get around these rules, he eventually began his own research company where he could consult with members of Eucken’s group at the University of Freiburg. With their help, Erhard concluded that the Nazi system would fail, and even in the midst of the Second World War, he began preparing for a time when the Nazi government would be gone and Germany would need a new economic plan.