Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:45:49 -0500
Reply-To: "Peter T. Owsianowski" <pnoceanwesty@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "Peter T. Owsianowski" <pnoceanwesty@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: VW History - revival
In-Reply-To: <60D54C43DC87419A989BF94718B5921B@ZoltanPC>
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Great stuff, Zoltan:
Enter Major Ivan Hirst pursueding the Brits to buy 20,000 Beetles from
the partially rebuilt factory,, Heinz Nordoff and Ben Pons and it all
rolls out. What a great story.
On 12/25/09, Zoltan <thewestyman@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure how many of you know about what happened to the VW factory
> after WW II.
>
> The factory was bombed to pieces just as the whole Germany.
> When the victors were estimating the worth of the remains of the country in
> attempt to give it back to the Germans for the equivalent value of a "loan",
> the VW factory was declared worthless and more of a liability.
> The loan was actually not a loan to Germany, but a certain amount of payment
> to the victors to have their country back for themselves, the value what the
> country was worth at that time. The Germans paid it off in about thirty
> years or more. They also received a real loan in dollars from the Trumann
> adm. to rebuild the country. Which they also repaid in time.
>
> The VW factory was very badly damaged. It used to be a new factory where
> they only made about two thousand vehicles only. The building, the machines
> almost destroyed beyond repair and had to be fixed and it took a long time.
> The solders coming back from the battlefields, thin and hungry, found their
> homes destroyed, their families killed or missing. They lived in the
> factory after they fixed some of the roofs. Slowly they started to put some
> cars together and exchanged them for potatoes, onions, corn and meat,
> sausages, pickled fish and all kind of food they could find for them. There
> were no fridges yet. The machines were fixed well enough to press out the
> parts, cast the crankshafts and the blocks, grinding and honing the parts,
> etc. Many of the engineers and top workers were killed in the war.
> Ferdinand Porsche was put in prison for years but the VW got a manager from
> the victors who was dedicated to bring back VW to as high as possible, and
> he did.
>
> The workers rebuilt their houses. In Europe it was customary for a big
> company to buy a large area of land and build houses with gardens for their
> workers to have them stay with the company for a long time. Thousands of
> them. They looked the same, they were one room and a kitchen only but
> anyone could make it bigger. The toilet was outside and not flush in those
> days yet.
>
> It took a long time for them to rebuild the factory to acceptable condition
> and have all the machinery working to it's highest standard.
> But the quality was the same as anytime before. The sole of the workers
> were poured into the product. For a long time they did not received any
> payment. They were glad to be alive.
>
> A buyer had to pay in advance in full for the car and could only get it when
> VW sent them a letter that his car is ready for being picked up. Buyers had
> to come to the factory and take delivery of their cars. They arrived by
> train and drove away home in their first car. A new car. A German made
> car. Very few people had cars those days. Even bicycles were very few.
>
> The whole country was busy shovelling the rubbles onto trucks that took them
> out of town and that's how the little hills got created next to towns, that
> eventually got grown over with weed and did not look like broken bricks
> anymore. Berlin has several of them. Some of them got housing built in
> them already, with view.
>
> The rest of the history of VW we are more familiar with. They improved, got
> advanced, modernized, a new generation put it to the top of the car making
> world eventually.
> Today, there is a big building on the most famous road in Berlin, very close
> to the Brandenburg Gate, which is the most recognizable landmark in Germany,
> where they show all the cars they make, together with all the other ones
> that the companies they bought make, like Bugatti and a Rolls Royce product,
> Skoda, Seat of Spain, etc.
>
>
> Some of you may add to this more details I did not mention. I only tried to
> write down in a nutshell how it started up again.
>
> Merry Christmas 2009.
>
> Zoltan
> I'm glad to be one of you.
>
--
Sent from my mobile device
Pete
'79 Westy "Aardvark"
'87 Westy "Joe's Van"
WWW.Busesbythebeach.com
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