Germany's Flivver

Adolf Hitler, who promised to put a "people's flivver" (Volkswagen) in every German garage, collected $112 million in public subscriptions to build a big auto factory in Wolfsburg. About all it ever turned out was jeeps, and the only ride most Germans got for their money was a one-way trip to the battlefront. During World War II, Allied airmen smashed the plant.

Today the Volkswagen is West Germany's biggest-selling auto, and it is vying with France's Renault and Italy's Fiat for first place in Continental Europe. At the reconstructed plant, 16,000 workers are now turning out 120,000 Volkswagen a year (about one out of every two German cars). Cheap ($1,095), economical (36 miles per gallon), and with a top speed of 70 m.p.h. from its aircooled four-cylinder engine, the Volkswagen is also beginning to edge into transatlantic markets. Volkswagen's total U.S. sales have already reached 1,200; it recently shipped its 3,000th car to Brazil, and this week, for the first time, invaded Canada.

Snarled Production. Volkswagen's comeback began a few months after the war's end, when some of its workers secretly brought the old prewar dies out of storage, and used a surviving heavy press to make two complete cars before the British, who controlled the occupation zone, were aware of it. But the British approved more production, and were amazed when part of the factory's 6,000 workers were able to turn out 713 cars the first year, while the rest cleared away the factory's ruins.

But lack of mass-production experience got the plant snarled up. In 1948, the British brought in Heinz Nordhoff, who, as boss of General Motors' Opel subsidiary in Brandenburg, Germany, had run the biggest prewar truck factory in Europe. Nordhoff inherited a weird setup. No one knew who owned the Volkswagen factory or who should get its profits. Technically built by the Nazis' German Labor Front, the money came from 300,000 "Volkswagen savers," who paid $2 a week in advance for the cars they never got. But Nordhoff didn't care who owned the factory. Said he: "We just go on building cars."

Unsolved Mystery. Build them he did. Nordhoff found the plant turning out four different models. To cut costs, he trimmed Volkswagen's design to only one engine and one chassis which would fit any one of five different types of bodies. He lined up 729 dealers at home, 600 in 29 foreign countries. For workers he introduced such benefits as liberal social security, and, as profits and production rose, kept boosting their pay. Result: each of Volkswagen's 16,000 workers now turns out 7.2 cars per year, as compared to 1.3 cars in 1946, and profits have risen from $508,314 in 1948 to an estimated $875,000 in 1952.

Nordhoff has still not solved the mystery of who owns prosperous Volkswagen. Neither has the West German government. Until the lawyers and politicians decide, Nordhoff will go on making cars, and the dividends will be held in trust.

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