Word: volkswagen
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...Heinz Nordhoff is not yet satisfied. Last week, just before taking off on a trip to the Far East to check on car sales in India, Indonesia, Siam and Ceylon, Nordhoff made a last-minute inspection of Volkswagen's third production line at Wolfsburg, now coming into production. It will boost output from 750 to 1,000 cars a day. On top of that, a new distributor-owned assembly plant in Belgium (needed because of import restrictions) this week started up. And Australia, which last week got its first Volkswagen-the 200,000th exported since 1947-will soon have...
Stiff Shock. How was the Volkswagen miracle performed? When Heinz Nordhoff took over in January 1948, he moved a cot into one of the plant's drafty, rat-ridden offices and started on a seven-day week with only a few hours off for sleep. Believing that "labor and management must be unified into one big group that depends on the same success," Nordhoff called a meeting of his shabby work force. "I'm afraid I gave them a stiff shock," says he. "I told them their working methods and production were miserable. It was taking...
...Game. At Volkswagen, Nordhoff is paid modestly by U.S. standards (about $25,000 a year). He has long since moved off his office cot and into a modern Wolfsburg house, supplied by the Volkswagen company, where his wife and two grown daughters live in a manner not much different from automakers in Detroit. He collects modern art (latest acquisition: a Renoir), serves fine wines to his guests. Up at 6:30, he drives himself to work in a Volkswagen, spends his evenings reading business correspondence and studying Volkswagen problems all over the world. While most of his traveling...
Nordhoff has not, since 1950, publicly reported Volkswagen earnings; but they soared from an estimated $2,500,000 before taxes in 1948 to $7,500,000 in 1949, and $12,500,000 in 1953 (on sales of $100 million). Volkswagen, however, has no stockholders to reap a reward: the company's ownership (it is now in government custody) is a mystery still to be solved by the courts...
...people's car. A band of the original subscribers are suing to get their stake back, either in cars or money, and have recently won a tentative court decision that they have a legitimate claim. Until that suit is settled, there is little hope of finally settling Volkswagen's ownership...