Thinking Small (2 page)

Introduction
 

In 1949,
a ship called the MS
Westerdam
departed from the coast of Europe, its hundreds of passengers headed toward U.S. shores. Nestled deep in the ship’s cargo compartment, a pair of headlights peeped out of a dark tarp; two wide, open circles leading to the soft curves of what would soon be known as the world’s most recognizable car. Protesters, rebels, dissidents, politicians, businessmen, the world’s corporate elite—all would eventually become entwined in its story. By the end of the 1960s, it would do what no other car had done before: transcend age, class, and country to become a symbol adopted by them all. Americans would call the car the Beetle. In other places it would become the Flea, the Turtle, the Vocho, the Foxi, the Buba, the Fusca, the Poncho, and the Mouse.

Over the years, the car developed a cult following as well as a more public persona. It had fan club after fan club created on its behalf; it showed up in the films of Woody Allen and Stanley Kubrick; Disney endearingly dubbed it “The Love Bug”; it was even driven—briefly—by James Bond. For decades, the car filled college towns and campuses, the choice of students and faculty alike. It appeared on the cover of
Abbey Road.
John Lennon had a white one in his driveway. Packs of them dotted the beaches of California, surfboards strapped to their roofs. A children’s game even spontaneously developed around the car as kids scanned the roads in search of it:
Punch Bug red! No punch back!
The car became so ubiquitous that pop artist Andy Warhol included it in his iconic series of silk screens, placing it in the company of personalities such as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.

Today the original Volkswagen is still known as the longest-running and best-selling single car design in history, and it is the only car to have been brought back by popular demand … 
twice.
Sometimes referred to as the world’s most huggable car, perhaps no other automobile has ever been lavished with such attention and affection. But onboard the MS
Westerdam
on that cold winter day in 1949, none of that had yet come to pass. In those days, very few thought the car had potential. Reaching U.S. shores for the first time, the car had much more in common with the millions of immigrants coming over on similar ships, men and women who had been through dark times and were now seeking refuge or hoping to reinvent themselves, eager to find out if what they’d heard about the American dream was real.

It had been a long road. In fact, after nearly two decades of work and planning, the Volkswagen had only barely made it into existence at all. During the Second World War, the car’s country and factory were all but destroyed. Caught in the ugliness of the Nazi machine, it became a symbol of the hated party. By 1949, one of the men responsible for it had committed suicide and another had been kidnapped and placed in prison, where he languished, imagining he’d failed to fulfill one of his lifelong dreams.

Needless to say, when the car was unloaded on the docks of New York City that first time, it was not greeted warmly. Not only because of the dark stain of war that washed over with it, but also because of the undeniable fact that the round little car just didn’t fit in. America had been through a long Depression and a long war, but now unprecedented prosperity was finally leaking into the land and the country was on the verge of an automotive boom. The United States of the 1950s would be marked by wide elegant cars—the bigger the better—with flamboyant tail fins, extra comforts, and plenty of chrome. In contrast, the Volkswagen was oddly shaped and excruciatingly austere. People found it comical, awkward, and strange.

And yet on those very same New York shores, in pockets
throughout the city, there were men and women—people considered just as out of place as the car itself was in those days—who were feeling a new kind of energy, readying themselves to take the risk of dissenting, of going against the common way of doing things, of
thinking strange.
Likewise, back in Germany, a similar change was happening as the country struggled to come to terms with its dark history. On both shores, there was a desire to evolve from within, a need for individual freedom and economic responsibility, for less empty extravagance and for more meaning and truth. It would take a while to mature, but a revolution was rising, and the Beetle would be at the center of the wave. After so many years of obstacles and near misses, the car would finally be in just the right place at just the right time, merging with the larger flow of modernizing governments and evolving markets to revive a sense of joy and wonder in the world.

Beetle owners have a saying: They don’t find their cars, their cars find them. To some degree, that’s how this book came to be. My first real encounter with the original Beetle happened only after I’d graduated from college and moved to Germany. Riding back to Berlin after an artist residency in the countryside, lulled and drowsy in the backseat of an SUV, I was shaken from my daze when we came upon one particular town. That evening, the landscape had been empty and dark until suddenly there was the bright illumination of towering glass structures and fiery smokestacks: I was overwhelmed at the way this alien-like city suddenly sprang up out of the somber, empty terrain. One of the German friends I was with saw the effect it had on me:
That’s Wolfsburg,
she said,
Isn’t it strange?
She went on to explain that this town was originally built by the Nazis; Adolf Hitler had built it for his car.
What car?
I asked.
You don’t know it?
she wondered aloud.
I thought everyone in America knows the Bug.

In German, “Volkswagen” means “People’s Car.” At first, it seemed impossible to me that the same car that was once a child of Nazi Germany could grow up to become a symbol of freedom,
democracy, and love. But as I would soon discover in my research, the car had always been meant for
the people,
and it lived up to that dream in ways no one expected and no one could have planned.

Through all the years of its development, the basic look and feel of the car did not change, but the world around it did. Like a still point through the storm, it survived the chaos of so much contradiction and turmoil, and—thanks to the persistence of the men who championed it—eventually proved that an idea created in darkness can indeed become a vessel for light.

William Bernbach
did not look like a revolutionary. His sober meticulous suits and conservative ties did not catch the eye or distinguish him from any of the other advertising men walking New York City’s bustling streets in the 1950s. Thin and compact, with short dark hair neatly combed to one side, Bill had a small physique that was almost childlike. True, he was the creative head of his own advertising
agency—Doyle Dane Bernbach, soon to be familiarly known as DDB—but he didn’t come off as a typical executive of the time: his evenings were rarely full of expensive dinner parties or multiple martinis, he wasn’t embroiled in a string of heated affairs, he didn’t own a pristine country home, or live in a fancy penthouse uptown. Instead, for much of his life, Bill lived in an anonymous neighborhood in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn, he took the subway
into work each day, and he left on time every night to go home and have dinner with his kids and his wife.

Bill may not have looked like the kind of man who could catch the world’s attention, but he was, and by the late 1950s, people were beginning to notice him. Unlike the rest of the cookie-cutter ad agencies on Madison Avenue, DDB had a fresh sense of purpose filling its rooms, drawing people in. Walking into their offices in those days, through the haze of cigarette smoke, past the ringing phones and the interactive rush of talented young men and women, one always
found Bill Bernbach at the center of the buzz, his Brooklyn-tinged voice—simultaneously gentle and disarming—leaking out of his office and into the halls, his door always open. There was something alluring about his clear, blue-eyed gaze, and as the years passed, Bill rose to be known as
the creative center of his agency, the person all the art directors and copywriters wanted to speak to about their work, the man who could get that work into print, or
make it disappear without a trace. Bill was confident, and his confidence became DDB’s backbone. It’s what made so many want to be near him—his approval was a good luck charm of sorts—but it was also what made people hide from him at times, unsure or unready to face his clear and veracious eye. There were no rules with Bill; only vigilance.