Word: volkswagens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Kicks. Although this holy man has been doing penance only since 1971, when he was an art student, his catalogue of devotions is already longer than Mahatma Gandhi's at twice his age. Burden has caused himself to be nailed through the hands to the roof of a Volkswagen while, in his words, "screaming for me, the engine was run at full speed for two minutes." He has strewn broken glass on a street in Los Angeles and crawled naked through it; at the Basel Art Fair last year (a feast day, on which many priests and their temple...
...from the French government for a desperation merger. Italy's Fiat, hit by a sharp decline in sales, is struggling to unload an inventory of some 345,000 unsold cars. Meanwhile, a variety of troubles have overtaken the largest auto manufacturer outside the U.S., West Germany's Volkswagen...
...were down a thumping 30% in the company's most important export market, the U.S., which normally accounts for a third of the company's production. Mainly because of the export disaster, VW expects to report 1974 losses as high as $210 million-the first deficit that Volkswagen has shown since it was revived after World War II. Lately, VW's six West German plants have been operating at 60% of capacity, and nearly 80% of its 109,600 West German work force has been laid...
Board-Room Politics. One of Volkswagen's casualties was Rudolf Leiding, 60, who resigned as president last month. The company gave poor health as the reason, but by all appearances, Leiding's main problems were bad luck in sales and some brusque boardroom politics. When he took over the top job at Volkswagen's Wolfsburg headquarters in 1971, Leiding recognized that the basic Beetle, essentially a 1937 design, was steadily losing consumer appeal, and he moved quickly to develop new models to replace it. Unfortunately, the oil crisis and the subsequent economic slowdown hit just as Leiding...
...chauffeurs behind the lawnmower in nondriving hours. These days many servants are grateful to have any job. A wealthy Los Angeles contractor leaves his Rolls in the garage and the chauffeur in the garden when he visits a potential customer; instead, he drives his wife's beat-up Volkswagen to convey an impression of cost-consciousness...