Research Catalog

Title

Thinking small : the long, strange trip of the Volkswagen Beetle / Andrea Hiott.

Author

Hiott, Andrea.

Publication

New York : Ballantine Books, c2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xviii, 492 p. : ill.; 22 cm

Summary

Sometimes achieving big things requires the ability to think small. This simple concept was the driving force that propelled the Volkswagen Beetle to become an avatar of American-style freedom, a household brand, and a global icon. The VW Bug inspired the ad men of Madison Avenue, beguiled Woodstock Nation, and has recently been re-imagined for the hipster generation. And while today it is surely one of the most recognizable cars in the world, few of us know the compelling details of this car's story. In this book the author, a journalist and cultural historian retraces the improbable journey of this little car that changed the world. The wide-ranging narrative stretches from the factory floors of Weimar Germany to the executive suites of today's automotive innovators, showing how a succession of artists and engineers shepherded the Beetle to market through periods of privation and war, reconstruction and recovery. Henry Ford's Model T may have revolutionized the American auto industry, but for years Europe remained a place where only the elite drove cars. That all changed with the advent of the Volkswagen, the product of a Nazi initiative to bring driving to the masses. But Hitler's concept of "the people's car" would soon take on new meaning. As Germany rebuilt from the rubble of World War II, a whole generation succumbed to the charms of the world's most huggable automobile. Indeed, the story of the Volkswagen is a story about people, and the author introduces us to the men who believed in it, built it, and sold it: Ferdinand Porsche, the visionary Austrian automobile designer whose futuristic dream of an affordable family vehicle was fatally compromised by his patron Adolf Hitler's monomaniacal drive toward war; Heinrich Nordhoff, the forward-thinking German industrialist whose management innovations made mass production of the Beetle a reality; and Bill Bernbach, the Jewish American advertising executive whose team of Madison Avenue mavericks dreamed up the legendary ad campaign that transformed the quintessential German compact into an outsize worldwide phenomenon. This book is the remarkable story of an automobile and an idea. Hatched in an age of darkness, the Beetle emerged into the light of a new era as a symbol of individuality and personal mobility, a triumph not of the will but of the imagination.

Subject

• Volkswagen Beetle automobile > History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p.[435]-(447)and index.
• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Wobbly first steps -- The darkest hours come just before dawn -- Ooh : growing up -- Like pigeons from a sleeve -- Still going -- And going.

Call Number

JSD 16-205

ISBN

• 9780345521422 (hardcover)
• 0345521420 (hardcover)

LCCN

2011041090

OCLC

713188683

Author

Hiott, Andrea.

Title

Thinking small : the long, strange trip of the Volkswagen Beetle / Andrea Hiott.

Imprint

New York : Ballantine Books, c2012.

Edition

1st ed.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (p.[435]-(447)and index.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Research Call Number

JFD 14-2446