This old Volkswagen television commercial from the sixties shows an original Beetle driving off into the distance while a voice in the background says "... dieser Wagen läuft und läuft und läuft und läuft und läuft und läuft ...," "... this car goes and goes and goes and goes and goes and goes ..."
I spent most of my childhood on foot until the "Wirtschaftswunder" caught up with us and we could afford a (very second-hand) Beetle which in those days was available in any colour so long as it was black and had that classic flower vase on the dashboard long before the car became the hippie car of choice. It also sported a real iron bumper bar which was strong enough to push aside any left-over wartime debris.
My first boss, "Herr" Weber, "Bezirksdirektor" of the Hamburg-Bremer Feuerversicherungsgesellchaft - I thought I just throw this one in to acquaint you more fully with German compound nouns - could well have bought a bigger car but insisted on driving his Volkswagen, despite his wife clamouring for something more prestigious and his rather obese girth only just fitting under the steering wheel with nothing to spare.
are sitting on top of the car. Taken in the early 1950s somewhere near Königslutter.
The Volkswagen story began at a time when Germans drove it inside the fatherland only, and tanks everywhere else, but after the war the car achieved what its proponent had failed to do: it conquered the world!
In "Thinking Small - The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle", the author Andrea Hiott retraces the improbable journey of this little car that changed the world. 500 pages of facts and fun - read it here.
