Word: volkswagen
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...ownership of industry is estimated to be 20% or more. One lingering result of Mussolini's corporate state is that modern Italian businessmen must operate in an economy where more than one-third of business is controlled by the government. In Germany, Hitler's Third Reich started Volkswagen to produce his "people's car," but it made war vehicles instead and is still 40% state-owned. Governments control every major European airline-because every government pridefully feels it must have one, and no one else is willing to lose such money...
Perhaps not since the first postwar Volkswagen gunned into view has there been such a word-of-mouth consumer success as the Wilkinson Super Sword-Edge razor blade. When it was first introduced in Britain by the stodgy, 1 go-year-old Wilkinson Sword Ltd. (sword cutlers by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II). the Super Sword immediately took over 10% of the British blade market. Men who normally scraped through three shaves with the best blade available found they got more than ten with a Super Sword. Its farne spread to the Continent, then to the U.S.; supplies...
...using so much of their past earnings for current expansion, many German firms have also left themselves with dangerously small capital reserves. Undercapitalization caused the-recent downfall of Shipbuilding Tycoon Willy Schlieker. Heinz Nordhoff, the boss of mighty Volkswagen, thinks his company's reserves of less than $150 million are too small for a company with annual sales of more than $1.3 billion. To carry out adequate expansion and modernization programs, German industry as a whole needs an estimated $7.5 billion that it does not have...
Nordhoff, who had come to the U.S. to dedicate the new $2,500,000 Volkswagen headquarters in New Jersey, noted that nary a Volkswagen was to be seen around Cobo Hall. "Well," said he genially, "this is a 'national' auto show, isn't it?" To a luncheon audience that included Henry Ford II, G.M. Chairman Frederic Donner and Chrysler's President Lynn Townsend, he urged U.S. and foreign automakers to make common cause in ending all trade barriers in the free world. "I look with the same great concern as you do on the protectionist thinking...
...industry nor U.S. labor should fear free trade, Nordhoff argued. "Competition has made this country great. American competition will help make Europe great also." And then he gently suggested that maybe U.S. industry was not as alertly competitive as it might be. "This has been demonstrated to us at Volkswagen during the last half year. Out of 500 letters sent to companies in this country producing items we could use, over half were not even answered. Another 40% were answered, but the firms stated they were not interested. Only 10% seemed to want our business enough to respond positively...