Word: volkswagen
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...sprawling plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, one day this month, workers tightened the last bolts on a beetle-like sedan, and rolled it off the production line. It was the 500,000th Volkswagen to be produced since...
Smashed by allied bombs in World War II, the Volkswagen company has made an impressive recovery under the leadership of Managing Director Heinz Nordhoff, who in prewar days ran a General Motors subsidiary in Germany (TIME, Aug. 25, 1952). Nordhoff boosted Volkswagen production from 20,000 in 1948 to an estimated 170,000 this year, made Volkswagen the biggest auto plant in Europe and a potent continental competitor for British, French and Italian cars. To catch foreign markets, he set up assembly plants in Brazil, South Africa and Ireland...
...scene three months in advance, going over the course again & again, measuring gradients and corners. German drivers even got out of their cars to hand-test road surfaces. Leaving little to chance, the Germans saturated the entry lists with 23 Porsches, precision-built little speedsters made up largely of Volkswagen components. Britons, noting the Germans at work, did not even bother to make trial runs. Said one Jaguar driver: "It's a sporting event, not a scientific test. Where's the sport if you remove the unexpected...
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...
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...