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

by Andrea Hiott

  Woodstock could not have happened without the revolutions in transportation and communication that had taken place over the previous twenty years. The Woodstock festival was held on a piece of farmland that could be reached only by car. Pictures taken by people on their way to the festival show roads dotted with Volkswagen Bugs and Buses. True to the dream out of which it was created, the Volkswagen had become the first car to motorize the German population, but it had also become the first car for many young people in other countries, including America, as evidenced by the driving choices of the generation that created and attended Woodstock. But the car had also been embraced by Americans of all ages and all walks of life. In fact, it was America that first named the car the Beetle: the New York Times, viewing the car in 1938, had called it a “beetle,” and years later, once the car began to sell in the States, the name stuck. Later, it was even translated to German and officially adopted by Volkswagen; the car was called “der Käfer” (beetle) there, too. Ferdinand Porsche’s design had not only endured; it had become the symbol for a whole new generation. And it still looked almost exactly the same as it had in those early sketches that had littered his workshop’s floor.

  A flower-painted Beetle at Woodstock. (photo credit 55.2)

  But just as Woodstock was the climax of a revolutionary decade, 1969 was the year when the original Beetle design reached the climax of its tremendous popularity. That climax was both a kind of ending and a moment of new beginnings. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died in 1970, and Jim Morrison followed them in 1971. The war in Vietnam came to a close. The Civil Rights bill (passed in 1964 thanks to the support of President Lyndon Johnson) was coming into effect, and desegregation and a newfound respect for diversity slowly began to take root. The political youth movement dwindled, changing form. The country began to stabilize, to recover from the aftermath of the war and the deaths of many great political leaders and cultural icons, but the voices that had defined the sixties would persist. Over time, the memory of those influential men and women gave the country new strength and inspiration; their unnecessary deaths at such young ages motivated others to search for greater clarity. Many legends would emerge from the 1960s, and in its own small way, the Volkswagen Beetle would be among them.

  Throughout the 1970s, the original Beetle design would become known as one of the most versatile pieces of technology (especially automotive technology) in the world, with its engine being used to power everything from the Zamboni ice resurfacer to the landmark rotating Mercedes-Benz sign that sits on top of the Europa Center in the heart of old West Berlin. That same design had also led to the creation of the beautiful Karmann Ghia, a coupe and convertible that was produced from 1955 to 1974 by VW, which used the basic mechanics and chassis of the Beetle.

  In total, 21.5 million Beetles had been sold by 1979, having surpassed the Model T’s sales record as early as 1973. But as the seventies came to a close, the new market of small and affordable cars that had sprung up in response to the Beetle’s popularity—alongside new technology, new regulations in emissions and safety standards, and the switch to using unleaded gasoline—slowly eased the original VW out of production. Wolfsburg introduced a new staple car—the Volkswagen Golf. The generation that grew up in the 1980s in Germany is sometimes referred to as the “Generation Golf,” because so many of them bought the car, which was modern and fresh with state-of-the-art technology. Thus the old Beetle vanished quickly from the German market. And although the Golf didn’t sell well in the United States (where it was known as the Rabbit), as Germany slowed and eventually stopped production on the original Beetle, it soon disappeared from the American market as well. The last original Bug was sold in the United States in 1979.

  The Beetle was born in Germany and became an American star, but it was in Mexico that it got its last and perhaps sweetest farewell. Though it was no longer sold in Europe or the States, the original design continued to be produced in Mexico and Brazil until 2003. But at 9:05 a.m., on July 30, 2003, the very last Volkswagen of the original Porsche design (number 21,529,464) rolled off the assembly line to the sound of a mariachi band. As the musicians played “El Rey” (“The King”), preparations were made for the car to be transferred to Wolfsburg where it would live the rest of its days in the Wolfsburg Auto Museum. The last original Beetle was painted a sweet Aquarius blue, and its headlights looked surprisingly large underneath all the flowers that were placed on its hood that day.

  In many ways, the Beetle was Mexico’s first People’s Car too—its presence there was and is very strong. Because the people were so sad to see the original little Beetle go, a whole campaign was created to say goodbye to it. One of the television ads showed a very small parking space. Each big car that tried to fit into the space failed and had to leave. Finally, the words Es increíble que un auto tan pequeño deje un vacío tan grande (It is incredible that a car so small can leave such a large void) fill the screen. A memorable print ad showed a 1964 Beetle on one side of the page and a 2003 Mexican Beetle on the other. The 1964 Beetle was the very model that was made the year the factory had opened in Puebla, and the 2003 Beetle was the last original Beetle to be produced there. Underneath the first car were the words Erase una vez … (Once upon a time …) and underneath the second car Fin (The end).

  But was it?

  When Franz Marc (the young artist who had made such an impression on the adolescent Heinrich Nordhoff) was fighting in the First World War, he wrote in a letter home: “An observation that has1 plagued me through my military life is the eternal return of the same types of people. I often feel that there exists only a limited number of individual human types … In the same sense, ‘events’ are repeated unbelievably often if one has a somewhat somnambulistic feeling for this and ‘sees’ them … It is not an idle thought, for it reaches deeply into the secret of artistic creation; perhaps it is even its explanation … The True has always been true.… ”

  Many economists, politicians, mathematicians, writers, philosophers, and artists have spoken of this idea of repeating events and reincarnations; for example, Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence, Jung’s studies on archetypes, or Ernst Haeckel’s biological analyses and drawings collected in Art Forms in Nature. Indeed, when looking at many of the themes that reverberate through the VW story—the destruction caused by war, the idea of “making the world safe for democracy,” discussions about the free market and capitalism, the balance between manipulation and persuasion, and struggles over human and civil rights—it does seem that these motifs have recurred again and again in different ways and at different times throughout the history of civilization itself.

  Toward the end of the 1990s (when I was a teenager), a lot of the music we listened to, the clothes we wore, and even the ideas we had about politics and peace and war were recurring from the 1960s, a decade whose narrative we’d all somehow absorbed. We were attracted to that narrative for reasons we didn’t really understand but that had to do with things teenagers instinctively hunger for—exploration, acceptance within a group, something to take you outside of yourself and connect you to a bigger picture—and our ideas of Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix, Dylan, The Doors, John Lennon, Miles Davis, Andy Warhol, and the reverberating legacies of men like John F. and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., became ways for us to connect to that bigger picture: They might’ve represented the spirit of the 1960s, but that spirit was alive and potent for us.

  As Thomas Frank writes in The Conquest of Cool, many Americans who became teenagers in the 1990s “understand ‘the sixties’2 almost instinctively as the decade of the big change, the birthplace of our own culture, the homeland of hip, an era of which the tastes and discoveries and passions, however obscure their origins, have somehow determined the world in which we are condemned to live.” As 1990s teenagers, we were different from teens of the 1950s, and the notion that had changed us was what the 1960s had come to represent: As young people, we were more collectively aware of the power that the people can hav
e, especially young people, and of the complex responsibility that such freedom entails.

  With the 1990s being so linked to the 1960s in its recurring themes, it’s no surprise (in retrospect) that the ’90s were the decade that gave the Beetle new life. Just about anyone in the 1990s would have said the primary image—and often the only image—that came to mind when the word “Volkswagen” was heard was the Beetle. Yet the Beetle was no longer for sale, and hadn’t been for over ten years. Two young designers, J Mays and Freeman Thomas, who were working for the Audi Volkswagen design studio started to ask: Why? Why wasn’t there a Beetle? In the years since the original Beetle had gone off the market, the car’s reputation had only grown; it seemed it could be possible to bring back the Bug or to make a whole new Bug. The very idea was thrilling, and Mays and Thomas worked earnestly on a new design for the car. The style they came up with was basic and geometric; in profile, it looks like just three semicircles: one big one (the body) placed on two smaller ones, which represent the wheels. The design carried all the simplicity and playfulness that people remembered and loved from the original Bug. Many comments were made about how soft and feminine it was; Ferdinand Porsche’s grandson, Ferdinand Piëch (the man who would eventually succeed Carl Hahn as chairman of the board of management of Volkswagen), even described it as “womblike.”

  The concept car for the New Beetle (called Concept One) was created in the early 1990s and first shown at the 1994 Detroit Auto Show, but with utmost secrecy, as Germany had not yet committed to producing it. Many doubted they would ever commit. But the response in the United States was huge. People were ecstatic over the car. There was clearly a desire for Concept One to become a reality; the American people wanted a New Beetle. Word about Concept One spread fast after the show, and car magazines went wild discussing it, speculating about whether it would ever be built. Major publications like the Wall Street Journal even put the car design on their front pages. For such a small car, the New Beetle was a very big deal.

  However, Wolfsburg didn’t want to make another Beetle. The Volkswagen managers felt it was “too emotional,” and they weren’t comfortable with the translation gap that existed in the way Americans and Germans saw the car; this would be a car built just for the American market, it seemed, and that was a risky venture. The Golf had remained the star of Wolfsburg, the European bestseller, and it was a very modern, very “rational” car. Those were the kinds of cars that the Volkswagen managers wanted to continue producing. They had no desire to harken back to a bygone era or design.

  But popular desire for the car in the United States was so strong that the German executives eventually gave in. They said they would build Mays and Freeman’s Concept One (it would be called the New Beetle), but they absolutely required it to be modern and up to the German VW standard of quality. Thus it would be built using the Golf platform. The original Porsche design with the engine in the back would no longer be part of the new design. One ad for the New Beetle said it best: “The engine’s in the front, but its heart’s in the same place.”

  It was a good thing the executives at Wolfsburg listened to J Mays and Thomas Freeman: The New Beetle literally saved Volkswagen of America. According to automotive writer David Kiley, “by 1993, sales were so far in the toilet3 and the company was losing so much money that talk of leaving the U.S. was on the table in Germany.” It was the New Beetle that put Volkswagen back on the map in the States. The discussion of Concept One marked the first time Volkswagen had really been back in the American public news sphere since the glory days of the original Beetle. Publicity built up alongside anticipation for the car. People were on tenterhooks wondering if a New Beetle would indeed come to be. And this anticipation alone made Volkswagen a brand Americans began to reconsider.

  When the New Beetle was finally unveiled at its first public auto show in 1998, four years after Concept One had been developed, people cheered. The event had the feel of a class reunion or a sports match, not a corporate event. In celebration of the new model, VW had created a car covered in heat-sensitive paint that would change colors when touched. The car gave off a warm vibe that harkened back to its heyday in the sixties. In fact, when the car was first introduced to the press, the event was decorated with life-size posters of Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Janis Joplin, and most of the guests came dressed in tie-dyed clothing. When it went on the market in March 1998, the car was a huge hit, with more than 55,000 sold in the United States by the end of the year. Mays and Freeman had done something that hadn’t been done before anywhere: They had created a successful new design based on a well-known model from the past; they had kept the soul of a car intact, even as they changed its look.

  The 1998 New Beetle remained on the U.S. market from 1998 until 2010. A total of 477,347 cars were sold during this time. Mays and Freeman were celebrities themselves after designing the New Bug. Funnily and fittingly enough, they went on to become head designers at Ford, the home of the Model T, the original “People’s Car.”

  Maybe it was some of that same conflicted spirit from the 1960s, rekindled in the 1990s of my teenage years, that I sensed on that evening in 2007 when, three years after having graduated from college and moved to Germany, I was unexpectedly captivated by the glowing city of Wolfsburg. That night, riding back to Berlin from the countryside, I’d come upon the city by surprise, and from that moment on, for reasons I am still trying to understand, it was a place I could not forget. The glowing smokestacks, the huge glass buildings and doors and walls, the whole strange, electric feeling I’d had in passing through the town—all of that stuck like a bur in my mind, and soon I found myself on a train heading back to Wolfsburg.

  It was all very confusing at first. In looking for the story of the Beetle, I was trying to reconcile my ideas of Nazi Germany with my ideas of the Summer of Love, and the city itself was an odd new reality for me. Having never even heard of Wolfsburg before that moment when I saw its lights, I had no idea of its history, and I had no idea what to expect. Traveling there was one of those trips you take when you sit and wonder the whole time, “why am I doing this again?” I had set off with little more than a printout from GoogleMaps containing directions from the Wolfsburg train station to the Wolfsburg Auto Museum; wanting to understand how the town was connected to the Bug, I’d thought the Auto Museum would be the right place to start.

  Arriving on the train into Wolfsburg is an experience that still captivates me (and I’ve since been there many, many times). The small, almost bucolic train station does nothing to prepare you for what you see as soon as you pull into town. The towering brick presence of the VW factory seems to rise out of nowhere, then stays in your field of vision, regardless of where you move.

  The factory takes up the entire opposing bank of the canal that runs in a straight line parallel to the train station, so it is “standing right beside you” as soon as you disembark. The towering brick is a dirty industrial red, like something a Charles Dickens character might see walking down a grimy nineteenth-century London street. Simple, geometric, sturdy: one literal mile connected from start to end like a rusty paper that has been bent into long rectangular folds and then unfurled. Its dramatic length plays with the horizon: From the fat power station and its four brick smokestacks, a string of connected brick cubes push in and out as far as the eye can see, finally shooting upward again into the high-rise of executive quarters at the far end. Smack in the middle of the power station’s main wall there glows a giant blue-and-white VW sign, like a cyclopean eye watching over the city. I was told that if this sign were flat on the ground, you could drive a People’s Car in a perfect continuous U-turn all the way around it.

  Henry Ford once said “The man who builds a factory builds a temple. The man who works there, worships there.” And there is indeed a feeling of reverence that comes with seeing the old VW factory stretched out across the bank, separated from the canal by a singular, long lonely road, giving it an unobstructed imposition, like a benevolent giant. Its sou
thern façade seems to have its chest puffed out, nestled up close to the water with a further angle of pooled river cut in front like a moat. I would get a strange feeling sometimes when I walked near the factory and thought of the flood of foreign and German workers who’d poured over the bridges and through the tunnels to take up jobs there, of the British soldiers who made it their home once the Nazi regime had been beaten, of the DDB team, or of Nordhoff, Ferry, and Porsche. Realizing that all those men have also walked the grounds, the heavy brick factory transforms into a testament to what the car has endured.

  In Wolfsburg today, the tradition of art and creativity that was started and nurtured by Nordhoff has become a staple of the town. Carl Hahn, the young man whom Nordhoff sent to New York to head Volkswagen of America, eventually moved back to Wolfsburg with his wife and children in 1964, and continued the city’s legacy of artistic patronage when he became the chairman of the board of management at Volkswagen. The old Castle Wolfsburg, for example, which was home to a group of artists in the 1950s known as the Schloss Strasse 8 (Castle Street 8), is now full of art organizations, including a museum dedicated to the castle’s history (and the history of Wolfsburg), the esteemed City-Galerie Wolfsburg, and the lively Verein Junge Kunst (Young Art Association). And while the city is small, it is packed full of architectural gems, diverse works that have a kind of futuristic quality to them. There are two unique minimalist churches and one cultural center designed by the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto; a long, modern theater built by another architectural great, Hans Scharoun, and, most recently, and perhaps most visually spectacular and strange, there is the Phaeno Science Center, a building shaped like a stretched rhombus that sits by the train station, just across the canal from the factory and Autostadt, designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. There is also the magnificent Kunstmuseum (the Wolfsburg Art Museum), one of Carl Hahn’s pet projects, a looming bastion of metal created by renowned architect Peter Schweger, prominently located in the center of town, facing the Volkswagen factory from the far end of Porschestrasse.