Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:31:24 +1000
Reply-To: Stephen Overmyer <s.overmyer@UWS.EDU.AU>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stephen Overmyer <s.overmyer@UWS.EDU.AU>
Subject: FW: Obituary for Major Hurst
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A bit more info on Major Ivan Hirst for anybody who's interested
from the Vintage VW & Aust.VW lists...
Steve O.
>
> London Times March 20, 2000
>
> IVAN HIRST
>
> Ivan Hirst, TD, car engineer, was born on March 1,
> 1916. He died on March 10 aged 84.
>
> AMID the bomb-blasted ruins of a German factory, Sir
> William Rootes, who with his brother Reggie had founded
> the British car dynasty, poured scorn on a young officer's
> plans. "If you think you're going to build cars in this place
> you're a bloody fool, young man," he told 29-year-old Major
> Ivan Hirst.
>
> Rootes, later Lord Rootes, had not counted on the
> determination of the young REME officer and his
> colleagues, and over the next half century some 22 million
> Volkswagen Beetles rolled off the production line. The
> German plant, at Wolfsburg in the north of the country, had
> been built to turn Hitler's dream of a small, cheap reliable
> "People's Car" into reality. Only a handful of prototypes
> were built, however, before the plant was commandeered
> for the German war effort.
>
> By the war's end Wolfsburg was in ruins and two thirds of
> the factory had been destroyed by Allied bombs. Hirst's
> commanding officer, Colonel Michael McEvoy, who had
> seen the Volkswagen at the 1938 Berlin Motor Show,
> suggested the pair of them rig up a prototype. They painted
> it military green and showed it to their Allied commanders,
> winning an immediate order for 20,000 cars.
>
> "Nobody gave me a real brief," Hirst once explained. "I
> was just told to go there and do something." British
> Intelligence weeded out Nazis from the factory's
> management, Russian slave labourers were sent home,
> returning German POWs were offered employment, and by
> 1946 an 8,000-strong workforce - living in huts and
> surviving on potato soup - were labouring round the clock to
> turn out 1,000 Beetles a month.
>
> Nevertheless, Hirst was faced with continual staffing
> difficulties: "It was a time of de-Nazification and the locals
> were making claims and counter-claims about each other
> all the time. Workers would arrive one day, be kicked out
> the next and turn up again in a couple of weeks." By 1947
> production was up to 2,500 a month and soon surplus
> models were being sold for export. British motoring
> manufacturers expresed dismay as the car's success grew.
> Some openly wondered which side Hirst was on.
>
> In Whitehall the Treasury had no doubt. It encouraged the
> exports because the Beetle brought in badly needed
> currency for Germany, saving the British taxpayer money.
>
> Years later Hirst described his role in what was a
> quasi-military operation: "I inherited the basic car but I
> introduced to the factory valuable lessons I'd learnt in the
> Army. I arranged an efficent back-up service and ensured
> that no car left the plant without spare parts being readily
> available."
>
> Born in Saddleworth, Ivan Hirst was educated at the local
> grammar school and at the University of Manchester. He
> worked in the family's optical instrument firm, high up in the
> Pennines.
>
> Soldiering with the Territorial Army at the Huddersfield drill
> hall and driving grand cars were his main interests, but
> come the Second World War he was promoted to the rank
> of major in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment and was
> evacuated at the fall of France. Transferred to the Royal
> Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in 1942, Hirst
> managed a tank repair shop in Brussels after D-Day before
> being sent to Wolfsburg.
>
> Eventually, tipped off that his masters felt it was time for a
> German to take over, Hirst recruited Heinrich Nordhoff, a
> former production manager with Opel, to his team.
> Nordhoff was appointed as managing director in January
> 1949 where he remained until his death in 1968.
>
> Hirst left Wolfsburg in August 1949, a month before the
> company was formally handed over to a trust run by the
> West German Government, and later worked in the Foreign
> Office's German section before joining the secretariat of
> the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
> Development in Paris. He retired back to the Pennines he
> knew and loved in 1975, where he became a popular figure,
> inspecting passing VWs and welcoming interviewers.
>
> Meanwhile, the Beetle, with its curious rear engine and
> frog-eyed lamps, could not be squashed. When
> Volkswagen stopped production in Germany in 1978,
> assembly was transferred to Mexico at the request of
> President Salinas.
>
> Wreathed in pipesmoke, with his cravat and clipped white
> moustache maintaining the military air, Hirst was modest
> about his achievements, although he did find it strange that
> ultimately the Allies had contributed so much to the German
> economic miracle: "Perhaps as a country we've not been
> too willing to accept some of our own ideas and wisdom,"
> he mused. "I'm still bewildered as to how things have
> turned out."
>
> His wife, Marjorie, predeceased him. They had no children.
>
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