Word: wolfsburg
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Farther north, in Wolfsburg, where the giant Volkswagen factory turns out 4,000 cars each working day, Mayor Werner Schlimme reels off half a dozen other examples of spontaneous East-West contacts that have occurred since the Iron Curtain lifted. "One day in November, a couple of garbage men from Klotze came over and saw one of our municipal garbage trucks at work," he says. "They thought it was wonderful how it lifted the cans and emptied them automatically." Garbage men from the two sides, separated by politics and technology but united in language, began talking trash. The West German...
...world automakers are now scrambling to grab a niche in the market for efficient, very high mileage compacts and subcompacts for the mid- to late 1980s, but Volkswagenwerk of Wolfsburg, West Germany, is quickly pulling ahead. Having largely phased out its venerable Beetle profile of the 1950s and 1960s for the engineering improvements and angular lines of the bestselling Rabbit in the 1970s, the company is now at work on the aerodynamically sleek silhouette of a new subcompact four-seater design that looks more like a Gucci slipper than...
...Volkswagen's sprawling headquarters in Wolfsburg, Chairman Toni Schmücker and his top aides are pondering a major question: Should the West German automaker build a second plant in the U.S.? A final decision is expected by year's end, and the early signs point toward a definite ja. A team of Volkswagen experts is already studying possible sites; the new plant would be an assembly operation that would put together the popular, front-wheel drive Rabbits and would probably be on the West Coast...
...stimulating employment in auto-related industries. Already, says Plant Manager Richard Cummins, VW is doing business with some 1,800 Pennsylvania firms. If all goes as planned, VW will be assembling its U.S. Rabbits mostly from U.S.-made parts by next year, with only engines and transmissions coming from Wolfsburg, West Germany. In economically depressed Lewistown, Pa., for example, C.H. Masland, a U.S. company, is building a plant to supply carpeting for Rabbits; it will employ 200 people...
...hired about 1,000 workers. Most live within 35 miles of New Stanton, but some with special skills have come from Ohio and New York. For management talent, VW turned to Wolfsburg and Detroit. To run the Volkswagen Manufacturing Corp. of America, VW raided General Motors and got lanky James McLernon. Despite seven years of service as Chevrolet's general manufacturing manager, he was passed over for a vice presidency and was ripe for plucking. He left GM with some misgivings: "It was a tough decision to make." But VW's lure was a reported $1 million, five...