- Summary
- "The People's Car is a transnational cultural history tracing the Beetle from its origins in Nazi Germany to its role in the postwar West German "economic miracle" to its popularity in midcentury Europe and the U.S., second career in Mexico and Latin America, and revival in the late 1990s"--Provided by publisher.
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. - Publisher.
- Variant Title
- Global history of the Volkswagen Beetle
- Format
- Book
- Author/Creator
- Rieger, Bernhard, 1967-
- Published
- Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2013
1304
- Contents
-
Prologue: some shapes are hard to improve on
Before the "people's car"
A symbol of the national socialist people's community?
"We should make no demands"
Icon of the early federal republic
An export hit
"The Beetle is dead
long live the Beetle"
"I have a vochito in my heart"
Of Beetles old and new
Epilogue: the Volkswagen Beetle as a global icon.
- Notes
-
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Prologue: some shapes are hard to improve on -- Before the "people's car" -- A symbol of the national socialist people's community? -- "We should make no demands" -- Icon of the early federal republic -- An export hit -- "The Beetle is dead -- long live the Beetle" -- "I have a vochito in my heart" -- Of Beetles old and new -- Epilogue: the Volkswagen Beetle as a global icon.
