Waterstones The People’s Car
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Price: £25.95
Brand: Waterstones
Description: At the Berlin Auto Show in 1938, Adolf Hitler presented the prototype for a small, oddly shaped, inexpensive family car that all good Aryans could enjoy. Decades later, that automobile | ??the Volkswagen Beetle | ??was one of the most beloved in the world. Bernhard Rieger examines culture and technology, politics and economics, and industrial design and advertising genius to reveal how a car commissioned by Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche became an exceptional global commodity on a par with Coca-Cola. Beyond its quality and low cost, the Beetle's success hinged on its uncanny ability to capture the imaginations of people across nations and cultures. In West Germany, it came to stand for the postwar 'economic miracle" and helped propel Europe into the age of mass motorization. In the United States, it was embraced in the suburbs, and then prized by the hippie counterculture as an antidote to suburban conformity. As its popularity waned in the First World, the Beetle crawled across Mexico and Latin America, where it symbolized a sturdy toughness necessary to thrive amid economic instability. Drawing from a wealth of sources in multiple languages, The People's Car presents an international cast of characters | ??executives and engineers, journalists and advertisers, assembly line workers and car collectors, and everyday drivers | ??who made the Beetle into a global icon. The Beetle's improbable story as a failed prestige project of the Third Reich which became a world-renowned brand illuminates the multiple origins, creative adaptations, and persisting inequalities that characterized twentieth-century globalization. Waterstones The People’s Car - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9780674050914
Delivery cost: 0.00
ISBN: 9780674050914
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Author: Chris Jackson
Rating: 5
Review: Read this I could not put it down. From the conception of the car under the Nazis to Major Hurst getting the Wolfsburg plant going again. How this little car took on the American auto market and won and reinvented its self in Mexico. If anybody is a car buff this is for you brilliant.
Author: Luigi Facotti
Rating: 1
Review: To many, the VW Beetle is a highly familiar cultural icon that represents the best of Californian flower power with all its associations of personal freedom - a fun automobile. If not at the anthropomorphic level of Disney's Herbie, the icon is certainly one that has good memories for many in Germany, the US, Mexico, Africa and South America as evidenced most recently by the smiles in the Super Bowl "Bug Punch" advert. The Beetle, a relatively cheap and very reliable (if not the most luxurious) form of transportation transcended the concept of the automobile to become part of an eclectic life style and a statement of individuality. Even the New Beetle, launched in 1998, and its successor the `new' VW Beetle launched in 2011 with a body style more reminiscent of a PT Cruiser than a Beetle, immediately engendered identification with the heritage of the "original" Beetle such that "many Beetle fans" thought "they had died and gone to heaven" on seeing the New Beetle in its Concept 1 incarnation in 1994 (p.311). In the present book, the author examines the Beetle legacy in the form of its original 1930s conceptualization as "The People's Car" (hence the title) and places it in the context of the Third Reich, the postwar rise of West Germany, the role of affordable automobiles in spreading ownership and social mobility, the aforementioned flower power era with all its political connotations, the globalization of the auto industry, and to a limited degree, the decline of Detroit. The author, a historian at University College London, does a credible effort in outlining the importance of the Beetle in late 20th century history. Surprisingly, he does not place the Beetle in the context of the German automobile industry as a whole with the postwar evolution of Mercedes and BMW being, to a major extent, ignored. The book itself is however dull in contrast to its subject matter while the dust cover (which is elegant and could have come from Apple Design), belies the tedium of the book. The author's view is so academic (in all its worst connotations) in tone - except on the point of the Beetle's origins - it comes as a surprise that he actually attended festivals celebrating the car. The text also tends to ramble and repeat itself and would have benefited from better editing. This is especially true in the last chapter and the Epilogue where the author appears to have difficulty in finishing the book. The Beetle, according to the author has its design origins in Porsche's team "borrowing heavily" from the Czech Tatra T97 and its economic underpinning from Hitler's interest in the "The People's Car". While the Third Reich's interest in the latter never reached fruition, its pre WWII investments in physical plant left a legacy for VW that allowed it to become the global marque it is today. This is an important point - perhaps a little dismissive of the genius of Ferdinand Porsche - and one well made, but the author intermingles it incessantly with the success of the Beetle such that a Beetle owner appears mandatorily required to do absolution for enjoying his or her ownership of the car. In at least 28 places throughout the text the author provides variations on the theme of the "Beetle's Nazi origins". Indeed, the author seems surprised (p.304) that "Next to the eminent personal significance Beetles can assume, their roots in the Third Reich pale into significance". Actually, he probably meant "pale into insignificance" - a minor point but one that might perhaps have been avoided if he were not so obsessed with the "Beetle's Nazi origins". While the book is generally accessible - there are elements of pretentiousness - "caesura" on p. 252 is inappropriate usage - and what on earth "mnemonic salience" (p.323) is supposed to convey to the reader is anyone's guess - neither Google nor Google Scholar can help with this. The photographs - very few in number - are poorly reproduced and add little to the text. Overall a disappointment.
