The Iconic, Complicated VW Beetle

Summary

Summary of "The Iconic, Complicated VW Beetle" Episode from Stuff You Should Know

In the August 5, 2025 episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosted by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant from iHeartPodcasts, the duo delves deep into the rich and tumultuous history of the Volkswagen Beetle. This episode intertwines personal anecdotes, historical insights, and cultural impacts to paint a comprehensive picture of this iconic vehicle.

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Personal Connections and Early Experiences

The episode kicks off with Josh sharing his sentimental attachment to the VW Beetle, recounting his experiences with various models:

Josh Clark [00:54]: "I had a '68 Beetle that my parents bought new in 1968, which, as we'll see, was the year they boomed in the States."

Chuck engages with Josh's nostalgia, leading to a playful discussion about different Beetle models, including the rare "Type 3 squareback" station wagon variant, sparking curiosity and enthusiasm:

Chuck Bryant [02:31]: "But I'm not familiar with that last one."

Their friendly banter sets a warm tone, making listeners feel connected to the hosts' personal histories with the Beetle.

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Origins of the Volkswagen Beetle

The conversation transitions into the Beetle's inception during the tumultuous 1930s in Germany, highlighting the car's association with the Nazi regime and its intended purpose as "the people's car."

Josh Clark [09:11]: "The whole thing was started off in the 1930s, championed by no less than Adolf Hitler in Germany."

Ferdinand Porsche's pivotal role is discussed, emphasizing his design contributions and the initial underestimation of the Beetle's aesthetics:

Chuck Bryant [09:38]: "Ferdinand Porsche came up with the design. He also came up with the Beetle's iconic characteristics, which is that the engine is in the rear, it's air-cooled..."

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Complexities and Controversies

The episode doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of the Beetle's history. Josh and Chuck explore the use of forced labor during WWII, revealing the unethical practices behind the Beetle's production:

Chuck Bryant [30:06]: "They use slave labor in concentration camps built into the automotive factory complex."

They also shed light on the erasure of contributions from Jewish engineers like Joseph Gans, who initially influenced the Beetle's design but were marginalized due to the Nazi regime:

Josh Clark [15:01]: "Joseph Gans... he was arrested in '33 and fled the country in '34. He never got any kind of compensation or recognition."

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Post-War Rebuilding and Global Expansion

After WWII, the Beetle's production was revitalized under British oversight, leading to the formation of Volkswagen of America and strategic marketing campaigns that transformed public perception:

Chuck Bryant [36:53]: "In 1955, they sold 32,662 of them. And one of the reasons for the huge leap forward... Volkswagen of America was formed."

The hosts discuss Heinz Nordhoff's leadership and innovations that enhanced the Beetle's appeal, making it a global phenomenon.

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Cultural Impact and Legacy

Josh and Chuck delve into the Beetle's lasting cultural significance, particularly its portrayal in media and its enduring popularity in regions like Mexico:

Josh Clark [47:03]: "One year after that, it got a big bump when Disney came out with the Love Bug movies. Herbie was definitely a lovable car."

Additionally, they explore the Beetle's adaptability, such as its transformation into dune buggies by enthusiasts like Bruce Myers:

Chuck Bryant [50:23]: "Bruce Myers was a dune buggy guy. He built a kit car using a Beetle chassis and reconfigured the shell."

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Modern-Day Beetles and Continued Enthusiasm

The episode concludes by highlighting the Beetle's status as the longest-selling car of all time, with over 21 million units produced. The hosts share personal touches, like Chuck's affection for his Beetle and Josh's memories of its unique features:

Josh Clark [56:07]: "There's a very particular smell when I stick my head in a Beetle. It smelled like no other car made on the interior."

They also touch upon the Beetle's evolution into newer models and its continued presence in automotive culture worldwide.

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Notable Quotes

• Josh Clark [09:11]: "The whole thing was started off in the 1930s, championed by no less than Adolf Hitler in Germany."

• Chuck Bryant [30:06]: "They use slave labor in concentration camps built into the automotive factory complex."

• Josh Clark [15:01]: "Joseph Gans... he was arrested in '33 and fled the country in '34. He never got any kind of compensation or recognition."

• Chuck Bryant [36:53]: "In 1955, they sold 32,662 of them. And one of the reasons for the huge leap forward... Volkswagen of America was formed."

• Josh Clark [47:03]: "One year after that, it got a big bump when Disney came out with the Love Bug movies. Herbie was definitely a lovable car."

---

Conclusion

"The Iconic, Complicated VW Beetle" offers a thorough exploration of the Beetle's multifaceted history, from its controversial beginnings to its beloved status in popular culture. Through engaging storytelling and insightful analysis, Josh and Chuck provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of how a car can embody both innovation and historical complexities.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Hey everyone, I want to talk to you for a sec about Squarespace and specifically Squarespace Payments. If you're running a business and using Squarespace, you're doing the right thing. Because Squarespace Payments is the easiest way to manage your payments in one place. Onboarding is fast and simple. You can get started in just a few clicks and start receiving payments right away. Plus, you can give your customers more ways to pay with very popular payment methods like Klarna ACH direct debit in the US Apple Pay Afterpay in the US and Canada, and Clearpay in the UK. Just go to squarespace.com stuff and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use our offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I guess I should say beep beep and welcome to the podcast. This is stuff you should know, the love bug of podcasts. And the reason why is because it features Charles W. Chuck Wayne, Chuck Tran Bryant.

[Josh Clark]

Is it a reference to my first car or just me?

[Chuck Bryant]

Just you. You're a love bug.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. I gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Jerry's a love bug too, but much more insect. Like.

[Josh Clark]

This was my first car.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. Is that why you selected this?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, I've always had a soft spot for the old VW Beetle. I had a 68 that my parents bought new in 1968, which, as we'll see, was the year they boomed in the States.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, I do know that, yes. I didn't know if there was more to your story.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no. I just thought. No, I mean, I'm continuing my story, so. Yeah, I just thought that you might react or something. It's fine. Then I later had a 75 Super Beetle Liar. And then I had a squareback, a type 3 squareback. I think it was a 75 as well. And that was actually my favorite of them all.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I'm not familiar with that last one.

[Josh Clark]

You'd recognize it. It was sort of a. It was their version of a station wagon.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you're talking about the thing.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no. Thing wasn't a station wagon at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I've never seen a Beetle station wagon in my life, dude.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, I'll send you a picture.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Yeah, that's cool. I guess it was roomy, trunk wise.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, no, not at all. It was, you know, about. It was probably in the chassis of a Beetle. So it wasn't like. It was big. It wasn't like the huge station wagons of its day.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it was basically just the shape of. It kind of was. Station wagon esque. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I'm going to send you a picture right now, buddy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Please do. I don't have my phone near me, but I'll pretend I saw it.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Have you sent it yet?

[Josh Clark]

Not yet. Just say, oh, my God, I have seen one of those.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, tell me when you sent it.

[Josh Clark]

Well, just continue because it's taking longer than I thought.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, I have a riddle for you, Charles.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

What do the foreign words Babel, Cosenelle, Tortuga, Sapito, Bouba, and vocito all have in common?

[Josh Clark]

Well, I mean, they're all various names in various countries of the Volkswagen Beetle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's long and short of it. They have nothing else in common. Except for that. But that's pretty cute. All of those names are pretty cute. And the reason why is because the VW Beetle is a very cute car, which is kind of a strange thing to say. If we were to go back to the 50s, old timey 1950s post war American suburban dudes would probably beat us up for saying that the Beetle was cute. They'd say, no, it's an ugly car. Everybody knows that. And no one thinks that anymore. Everyone loves the Beetle. And that's the end of the podcast.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Good night. I sent you the picture. I'll see you tomorrow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hold on. Beep bop, boop boop. Oh, yeah, I've seen one of those before. They're great.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I look forward to your real and your rear response later. But I called mine the Type three. It was a type three squareback. But the original name of the VW Beetle was Volkswagen type 1. And the Germans themselves kind of renamed it Der Keffer K A umlaut F E r, which is beetle in German. But Volkswagen, I mean, they kind of just took that name upon themselves because people were calling it that already.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they stole it from Der Folk. Der Volk.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, the people.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because it was Der Volk who came up with the name Beetle, like you said. But it was Der Volk for whom the Beetle was created, Chuck. Which is the reason why Volkswagen is called Volkswagen. It means the people's car. And that is the basis of the entire story of the Beetle. The whole thing was started off in the 1930s, championed by no less than Adolf Hitler in Germany. I mean, where else? And the point of the car was to create an affordable car that the average German family could use on the newly built Autobahns, which Kraftwerk famously sung about, and which would also bring the German economy out of the slump that it had been in during the Weimar Republic. And I don't know if you remember or not, but we talked about the German hyperinflation many times around this time. Late 20s, early 30s. And get this. There's a stuff you should know listener Dave Kuston sent this to us yesterday. I don't know if you saw, but there's a stuff you should know listener named Scott Seligman, and he created a search tool where you can search keywords, and it will bring up every Stuff youf should Know episode that we mentioned. Say the word hyperinflation in. So that's how I know that. It was in our episode on currency that we talked about that. So hats off to Scott Seligman.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Can people use that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So the. The URL is just too kludgy to. To say out loud. So I would encourage people. I think he posted it on the stuff you should know subreddit, and that would be a good place to go get it.

[Josh Clark]

You should have made one of those little URL shorteners.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know if that's legal, to do that to someone else's URL.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. I thought it was just a way to send out, like, hey, just go to, you know, keyword syskyword.com or something, and it would redirect.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I'm not that savvy, Charlie. I'm 49 years old, for Pete's sake.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, speaking of that and Kraftwerk, that leads me around to this. Did you notice that I use Kraftwerk on your stuff you should know birthday post?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I didn't. I saw that post. Thank you very much for. It was super sweet. But no, I didn't notice. What was the Kraftwerk reference?

[Josh Clark]

Did you? No, I had the Kraftwerk song playing to the post.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I know.

[Josh Clark]

Did you have your volume down?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I never have my volume up for stuff like that. Which one?

[Josh Clark]

I got you a model. I don't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

A model would be appropriate.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not sure which one it was. I wish it was Autobahn because that'd really bring this thing full circle.

[Chuck Bryant]

It really would. But still, the Kraftwerk mention. I'm going to go back and listen to it. I appreciate that. I'm going to look at the picture of your station wagon and listen to the Kraftwerk song that you posted for my birthday. I appreciate that, man.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, it's only a station wagon in the purest sense of the word. It's more like a stretched hatchback.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's too late, Chuck. You really built it up as a station wagon. You can't backpedal now.

[Josh Clark]

But they also had. And you know, this is along the same lines. Instead of the actual squared back, there was. Oh, what did they call it? Not the round back or did they.

[Chuck Bryant]

The green back.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. But they had a similar model, except it wasn't as boxy. It was a little rounded, but it still had the hatchback.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. I'm totally lost now. I know about the Beetle, but that's about it.

[Josh Clark]

All right, well, let's keep talking about the Beetle then. Like you said, the people's car. We're going to tell you about the history here because the history is a little complicated. And I don't mean like, oh, it's complicated because the Nazi party commissioned it. It's complicated because there's a bunch of different people who they borrowed heavily from to kind of make the Beetle Hitler. And there are also various stories, depending on who you want to listen to, about whose initial idea it was. Hitler, if he were alive today, would say that it was his idea first and foremost. And he picked Austrian, a gentleman named Ferdinand Porsche. Porsche to design the first Volkswagen. And that Porsche came up with that iconic shape, that round looking, weird looking car for the time. And we're so used to him now because it's literally the best selling car of all time by a long shot, that everyone's like, no, it doesn't look weird, it looks like a Beetle. But back then it looked very strange.

[Chuck Bryant]

It did. And that was essentially the end of the story. Ferdinand Porsche came up with the design. He also came up with the Beetle's iconic characteristics, which is that the engine is in the rear, it's air cooled, which saves on space. You don't have all those tubes or whatever for water, liquid fueled or cooled engine. And that it had real rear wheel drive. So essentially the Beetle was created whole out of, out of the first time out of the gate by Ferdinand Porsche under orders essentially from Adolf Hitler. That's like the story that most people know. Even Volkswagen's like, yeah, that's not quite right. There's some other details in there that are a little different and yet they still give all credit to Ferdinand Porsche, which as we'll see is misplaced. Really. If you drill down into it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, supposedly it could fit four adults. That's the party line. Well, I guess that's really not the right thing to say there. Although it was the Nazi party. Yeah, but you know what I mean, it's just an expression.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

But two adults in that back have to be pretty small adults. The backseat didn't have a lot of room, it didn't go super fast, but it could top 60 miles an hour. At the 1934 International Automobile and Motorcycle Exhibition in Berlin, Hitler came up on stage, gave a speech basically saying that I have called for the creation of this car, car of the people, something that would be affordable, something that you can drive on the Autobahn. Unless you're Jewish, of course, because Jewish people were not allowed to drive on the Autobahn. And the initial price was 990reichmarks, not Deutsche marks, but Reichmarks, which was about 31 weeks salary for the average German worker. So not a lot of money, but a lot of money at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

For sure, for sure. But still affordable. Right? I mean this is, this is, it's an. Unless they made you pay it all at once, then it probably wasn't very affordable. The point was to make an affordable car for Germany and then also create what almost amounted to a national state owned car company, Volkswagen, and to, to create both this car and ultimately the, the company that made the car, Volkswagen. In 1934, the Reich Automotive Industry association was formed. And that Reich is kind of a giveaway that the Nazis ran this consortium of private part, privately owned car manufacturers in Germany, brought them all together and said der Fuhrer really would like you guys to get together and make this people's car. And if not, you will all be summarily shot and so will all of your family. I don't know if they said that last part, but I think basically everything that was said in Germany during the 30s had that unspoken attached to the end of it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And you know, just to be clear, because I think I was probably confusing things a little bit, the two versions of that story is one, Hitler said it was his idea and then two, Volkswagen said No, it was really Porsche's idea to begin with.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that Hitler took and ran with it.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I don't know that he is said to have given Porsche the credit.

[Josh Clark]

Probably not.

[Chuck Bryant]

But the upshot of it is that this consortium of German automakers hired Ferdinand Porsche to create and design and create this Volkswagen. So there's no question about that. Like, the original Volkswagen Beetle was created by Ferdinand Porsche. What makes this whole story even more convoluted? You thought that was convoluted? Everybody buckle up.

[Josh Clark]

Well, they didn't have seat belts either.

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

At least mine didn't.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hang on to your oh, shoot, Bar.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

It gets way more convoluted than that because it turns out that Ferdinand Porsche either took credit for a lot of other people's ideas or just over time, was given credit. Kind of like, you know, the short sketch version of the story. Most people don't go into this much detail into the story of the vw, but we're stuff you should know, so we're going to do that. But there were a few people that kind of along the way, contributed to the. What would become the Beetle very directly. It wasn't like, hey, we should make a car and call it the Beetle. Their ideas were essentially taken and adopted and turned into the Beetle. Sometimes, like, as a whole.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty blatant when you look at these designs and these sketches and drawings and stuff like that. The first guy we're going to talk about is Joseph Gans, who was a Hungarian Jewish engineer, and he came to Germany after World War I. And from almost the beginning of the 20th century, I guess it was like 1904, 1905, people were talking about, like, a people's car. You know, motorcycles were the only kind of inexpensive way to get around. And they thought, hey, if we could get a car that's, you know, not too much more than a motorcycle that could actually hold a few Germans, then we'd be, you know, doing pretty well for ourselves. And he was a editor of a German car magazine. So he was. He knew his way around the idea of, like, an affordable, lightweight, kind of smallish car.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah. He also used that position to promote and try to drum up support for the idea of a German people's car in the pages of that magazine, too, which I think was Car und Driver. He even went so far as to design a prototype that he actually called the Maykopfer, the May beetle. This is 1931. This is long before the Beetle was even called the Beetle. Popularly and he had. There was another car called the Standard Superior. Did you see a picture of one of those?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, it looks like a Volkswagen Beetle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. And so apparently that was based on one of Joseph Ganz's patents. So this guy definitely had a lot of contribution to the development of the Beetle. And we're talking, I mean, 1931, the Standard Superior was built. In 1933, the Beetle started to start to be built. And I think 1934, 35, 36. So this is like, it's not like the Ferdinand Porsche was totally unaware of the Standard Superior. It was a car you could buy in Germany at the time. So you might say, well, why was Joseph Gans not credited for this? Why wasn't he hired instead of Ferdinand Porsche? Well, he was Jewish and he was arrested by the Gestapo before the Volkswagen Beetle was ever created, but right before it. So it was very easy for Ferdinand Porsche to be like, Joseph who? These are my ideas.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. He was arrested in 33 and fled the country in 34. And that was kind of it. He never got any kind of compensation or anything, or any recognition either, even, except for, I mean, us and other people on the Internet, I guess.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. And that's what counts, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The second guy we're going to talk about, another Hungarian engineer. I don't know what the little accents mean as far as pronunciation goes in Hungarian, but I'm just going to say bella barigny. Okay, good enough.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

All right. So he also wanted to build like a people's car, sort of a small, inexpensive thing. This was like he was a kid. He was a teenager in the mid-1920s when he came up with an idea for a rear wheel drive, rear engine, air cooled engine. And if you look at the sketch that he set out in 1925 and this is what, eight years before the Standard Superior. Even this thing looks a lot like a Volkswagen Beetle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. The chassis is exactly the same, essentially. And then even the body, he drew like a side view of the car and it's a Beetle. I mean, like he's creating this in 1925, like you said, as an 18 year old. And this one is so irrefutable that in the 50s, he apparently sued Volkswagen and they said, okay, from now on we will refer to you as the intellectual father of the Beatle, because you definitely laid down all the stuff that later became the Beatle, even though you weren't given credit at the time.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And he was like, does a check come along with that title?

[Chuck Bryant]

And they said nine.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They probably did. It's interesting though, if you look at the. I'm getting confused now. I think the standard Superior is the one that looked like a Beetle except the front end had a little kind of squared off center.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not sure about the front end and all the squared off business, but I do know that the lines were more right angled rather than rounded.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think that's the one I was thinking of. What it looks like actually is people VW Beetles are highly. Have always been highly modifiable as far as people making them look, and as we'll see later, like dune buggies or like this or that. And one of the kind of. I never really liked them that much, but one of the kind of fun things you could do with the Beetle was put a little front squared front end on it instead of that big rounded scoop, you know, a square front like a Model T Ford. And that was something that people would do to modify their Beetles. And it looks a lot like the standard Superior that way.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, like the hood.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Turning that. Yeah. Okay, I gotcha. I got you. I wasn't. I'm not up with the jargon in the lingo here. Like hood. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. This front and end thing. Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That's where the beat is.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think the standard. Right. I think the standard Superior did have a squared off hood as people call it.

[Josh Clark]

I'm a front ender. My bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then there was one other guy too, who was Austrian. His name was Erwin Kamenda and he's the one who actually filed the patent for the body that became the Beetle. This wasn't like he drew something along the way. He was working for Porsche. Porsche produced this design for this car. And the guy who actually drew the design and patented what the car ultimately looked like was a different guy. Yet if you just listen to all the stories, essentially it was Porsche Hitler. Porsche Hitler. Over time, VW would try to get away from that story a little bit, but it would come back to him. They had to finally kind of deal with it head on. Yeah, as we'll see. But in the meantime, Chuck, while we wait for VW to reckon with their Nazi past, I say we take a break.

[Josh Clark]

We'll be right back.

[C]

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[D]

When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I worked. I'm Maria Hinojosa. I dreamt of having a place where voices that have been historically sidelined would instead be centered. For over 30 years now, Latino USA has been that place. This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and Cultula. As the longest running Latino news and culture show in the United States, Latino USA delivers the stories that truly matter to all of us. From sharp and deep analysis of the.

[Chuck Bryant]

Most pressing news, they're creating this narrative that immigrants are criminals. This is about everyone's freedom of speech. Nobody expected two copes from the American.

[D]

Continent to stories about our cultures and our identities.

[Chuck Bryant]

When you do get a trans character like Emilia Perez, the trans community is going to push back on that colorism. All of these things that exist in Mexican culture and Latino culture.

[D]

You'll hear from people like Congresswoman aoc.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't want to give them my fear. I'm not going to give them my fear.

[D]

Listen to Latino USA as part of the My Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

We all know right genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not.

[E]

It's Black Business Month in tech.

[Josh Clark]

Green money is tapping in.

[E]

I'm Will Lucas spotlighting black founders, investors and innovators building the future one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech and generational wealth. I don't think any person of any gender, race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people Consider that rocking the boat. So be it. To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to black tech Green money from the Black Effect podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Josh Clark]

All right, earlier you said it was 35, 36 or so. It was in fact 35 when they delivered the first prototype. At this point, it was the VW Series 3. Dave helped us out with this, and he was keen to point out it was made from steel and wood, which sounds weird when you think of a car being made of steel and wood, but back then, cars were made of steel and wood generally, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And this was the prototype, but I think the. The eventual ones that came out were made of the same stuff. And if you look at it, it looks like a cross between a Beetle and one of the black cabs in the uk. Yeah, like those things, like one mounted the other and then the be The Beetle Series 3 came out.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

A little fun fact of the podcast. Hitler never knew how to drive. He never had a driver's license. And yet, if you step back, he was like, directly in charge. Or not directly in charge, but he was overseeing this. Like this. He knew what was going on. Maybe not day to day, but generally he was getting updates on the progress of this car and how it was coming. Like, this was not. Like, he said something at an auto show once, and then from that point on, it was kind of taken over. Like he had, like some sort of hand in it. Which is just crazy if you think about it, because I remember being a teenager and hearing like, man, you know, like the Volkswagen, it was like a. Like a Nazi car, the Beetle was. Or something.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I was that teenager who owned it at the time. So it was a little bit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, all right. I was the one throwing eggs at your car. Okay. But you know, when you. When you hear those things, like in college or high school or something like that, as you get older, you're like 98% of that stuff is totally wrong. It's just off. It's sometimes just totally untrue. This is one of those rare ones that is not only true, it's even worse than it seemed in college.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You were throwing eggs at my car and sucking down your fan of orange.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I was very confused at the time.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So in 1938, they built a factory in Stuttgart to start building this car. Like, you know, this tremendous people's car factory. The original, like, off the line edition, like, for real, finally was called the Volkswagen Type 38 KDF wagon. Big K, big F, little D. It stood for Kraft durch Freude, which is Strength through Joy, which was a literal Nazi propaganda slogan because you associate joy. They named their car off of that.

[Chuck Bryant]

With the Nazis for sure. So their plan was, this is 1938. Their plan was to produce 1.5 million of those a year. That is ambitious in the 1930s, but that's what they were going for. They ended up producing 210.

[Josh Clark]

Not 210,000.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, 210. 2,1 09er and that's it. The reason why in large part was because the war broke out in 1939. The reason the war broke out is because the Nazis started everything. Yeah, I just want to make sure no one forgets that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's true. And they immediately started sort of reconfiguring the the KDF to suit their military needs. So they came out with different types. A type 87 which was a four wheel drive and I guess that German officers would drive that one. They had a type 82 Kubelwagen, a bucket seat car. And that was armored. It was on that Beatles. Beatles like the band you get was on a Beetle chassis, but it was armored and so therefore safe. And I'm sure some of the higher ups rode around in that one for obvious reasons.

[Chuck Bryant]

That one very clearly to me became the thing. The VW thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I knew one person in high school, Mary Frances Shepard had a VW thing and I thought it was so cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh yeah, it was cool. Especially in high school. It takes some gall to drive such an unusual cool car.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, admit you were. And a little bit the same with me. I was the only person with a Beetle in my whole high school. Because everyone else wanted like a Mazda RX7 or something, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So that they also had a modified version of the type 82 or type 80. Yeah, type 82 called the Schwimmwagen, the swimming car. And you could drive around in the water with it. I saw a picture of some dude in his vintage Schwimwagen, like in the water. And it looks so nerve wracking. Like the water, the thing is maybe 8 inches above the water line. The rest of the car is below the water. Too close for comfort. Yeah, way too close for comfort. Apparently it went six full miles an hour on the water and there weren't very many of those made. So I imagine that that dude probably paid a lot for that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, probably so. And I don't know if you can. I doubt if you can still find one of these. But they had a. During the war, they had some gas shortages, some fuel shortages, so they developed a wood burning conversion kit for that Kubelwagen. So the bucket seat car, and I'm sure you looked up pictures of this thing, it had a little round hatch in the front of the car. What do you call that?

[Chuck Bryant]

The hood.

[Josh Clark]

And you would open up that hatch, like a wood burning stove, and put wood in there to power this thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's how you remember it's called a hood. That's where you put the wood, Right?

[Josh Clark]

That's right. That was her slogan.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that would power the car, not through combustion, but through pyrolysis, where the wood was gasified, and then those gases would be transferred to the pistons to make them go up and down and then make the wheels on the bus go round and round.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't know that was even possible. Not the wheels on the bus, but I didn't know that you could use wood in such a way to power a car. It's kind of cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it did work, but it didn't work very well.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

To answer your question, read some article on it, and the people said that as far as anyone knows, none of those survive. So you would not be able to find one of those.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Sadly. So in the end, while they were pumping these things out, what they would use was forced labor. They had. And this is another horrifying fact of the show, there were four literal concentration camps and eight forced labor camps on the grounds of the Volkswagen factory complex. And that's just like. That's his. Not only was it a Nazi car, like they were exploiting labor to make them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it gets even worse because Ferdinand Porsche specifically asked for forced labor to be assigned to build the Volkswagens because he wanted to keep costs down. So you put all this together. Hitler's directly involved in the creation and manufacture of this car. They use slave labor in concentration camps built into the automotive factory complex. And the reason that they're using slave labor is because the chief designer, Ferdinand Porsche, asked for slave labor. VW eventually had to, like, face this. As the world kind of continued on. People are like, guys, this is. We have to talk about this. Because this is not okay to just ignore.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, you wonder, like, could they literally arrest Ferdinand Porsche for this? He was held by French authorities at one point, but he was not convicted of a crime. But in the 90s, I think it was the early 90s, Volkswagen started a couple of different payouts. They paid 12 million German marks, Deutsche marks, which is about 63 million bucks today, to some of the survivors who were those forced laborers from that factory. And then about eight years later, in 99, Porsche actually set up a fund. Even they were like, yeah, Volkswagen's taking all the heat on this, but it was really our guy, so maybe we should pony up some dough. So they ponied up 5 million euros, about 10 million bucks today, to compensate some of those same laborers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep. So remember, they only produced 210 of what became the beetle. What, the type 38, is that correct?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think that was it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or the series three, one of the two. They only produced 210 of those before the war. During the war, they changed the whole VW factory to a defense vehicle factory. And then after the war, when they started to get back to business, it was under oversight from the British authorities. So it actually, in a really weird way, was the Brits who first fully realized Hitler's vision for a people's car for Germany.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was in their occupation zone, so it was kind of theirs. I guess they renamed the factory to the Wolfsburg Motor Works because of the Wolfsburg Castle that was close by. And that, you know, that I don't know if you would recognize. It depends on how much you've been in, like these old Beetles and Volkswagens. But a lot of them, like later on would be like the Wolfsburg edition, if they had a special edition of a Golf or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Even I know about that.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, all right, good. But they would have that little symbol, this little castle with a wolf there on the center of the steering wheel. Just sort of an iconic logo.

[Chuck Bryant]

I haven't seen that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you might recognize it maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is it on the hood?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know what that is.

[Chuck Bryant]

So with the Brits, they made 20,000 of those things. 20,000, essentially, beetles in 1946 alone. But all of them were to be used by Allied occupation forces in Germany at the time. Right. So they weren't the people's car yet. It wasn't. And I think the Brits ran it from 1945-49. In 1949, they finally handed it back over to the West German authorities. And in the interim, I think 1948, they hired the guy who would essentially be what, who you could truly call, like the real actual father of the VW Beetle, a guy named Heinz Nordhoff, who took the control of this factory and like ran with it and introduced the Beetle to the world.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, he really ramped up production. He was a Very experienced car maker. He made the car a little better. He, I think, gave it a little more horsepower, but, you know, that's not saying much because the Beetle was never known for that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it would actually cough sometimes, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He gave it hydraulic brakes, which is pretty good, and shock absorbers. But again, none of that stuff was, like. It was always a car that felt a little janky to drive.

[Chuck Bryant]

I remember you talking about yours. And the heater was redirected waste heat from the engine onto your ankles. Is that correct?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they just had these little vents down on the floorboards, and we called them ankle burners because it would just pump heat directly from the engine right out to your feet. And it would ultimately heat the car, but it would scorch the ankles.

[Chuck Bryant]

Was it bad enough that you could smell the hair on your legs burning?

[Josh Clark]

I didn't have hair on my legs then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. But it didn't have AC at all, did it?

[Josh Clark]

No. I know that some of the Super Beetles did later, and I don't think my Super Beetle did, though. But my 68 definitely did not. It was 260 air, which is. You drive 60 miles an hour and roll down two windows. Not a dad joke. That was a joke I heard back then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. From a dad, probably. So Heinz Nordhoff, he comes in, he takes over, and he's like, look, there's a lot of stuff we can do. Like you said, we can update the car. The problem is, we can sell a million of these in Germany, but German marks are so devalued right now because of the fallout of World War II, that we need to get some dollars in here. And the way that you get dollars is start selling them in America. So he tried that, and it did not go very well at first, in large part because America was like, that's a Nazi car, and you're probably a Nazi trying to sell us a Nazi car. And by the way, your stupid Nazi car is ugly as sin. Get out of here, Nazi. And Heinz Nordhoff was like, well, let's try this again in a year.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that's all it took. I think the first Beetle, and it was just a single one that came to America, was in 1949. It was a Dutch car dealer named Ben Pawn, and he had to sell that thing for, like, whatever he could get just so he could go back home, like, you know, transatlantic, sail back home that he's like, all right, I did barely sold the one car, so it's probably not a good idea to buy a bunch of these, but, like, you said just one year later in 1950, there was a dealer named Max Hoffman, a foreign car dealer that ended up selling 330 Volkswagens to dealerships that were selling Porsches and Jags, other foreign cars. So it fit in just a little better and doesn't look that much different. You know, those old bathtub Porsches, you know, the design is that different than the VW Beetle. They're very round and sort of buggy looking.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's true for sure. So I think in 1950 they sold 330 of them. Yeah, in 1955 they sold 32,662 of them. And one of the reasons for the huge leap forward, especially considering when the year before they sold 9,000, was that Volkswagen of America was formed. So essentially an extension, the American version of Volkswagen was formed. And that really kind of helped streamline importing, setting up dealerships, moving cars to those dealerships, getting car salesmen to step away from their chicken fingers in the break room and actually go out and sell the cars for once in their life. That's really. All those factors put together are what helped them start selling Beetles like crazy in the mid-50s.

[Josh Clark]

Should we take a break?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

All right, good. Cause I got a cliffhanger. A very key thing happened in the mid-50s to really ramp up sales of these. We'll talk about that right after this.

[C]

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[D]

When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I worked. I'm Maria Hinojosa. I dreamt of having a place where voices that have been historically sidelined would instead be centered for over 30 years now, Latino USA has been that place. This is Latino USA, the radio journal of news and Cultura. As the longest running Latino news and culture show in the United States, Latino USA delivers the stories that truly matter to all of us. From sharp and deep analysis of the.

[Chuck Bryant]

Most pressing news, they're creating this narrative that immigrants are criminals. This is about everyone's freedom of speech. Nobody expected two popes from the American.

[D]

Continent to stories about our cultures and our identities.

[Chuck Bryant]

When you do get a trans character like Emilia Perez, the trans community is gonna push back on that colorism. All of these things that exist in.

[D]

Mexican culture and Latino culture, you'll hear from people like Congresswoman aoc.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't want to give them my fear. I'm not gonna give them my fear.

[D]

Listen to Latino USA as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pod, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed, opportunity is not.

[E]

It's Black Business Month, and black tech.

[Josh Clark]

Green money is tapping in.

[E]

I'm Will Lucas, spotlighting black founders, investors and innovators building the future one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy tech and generational wealth. I don't think any person of any gender, race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level, to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that rocking the boat, so be it. To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to black tech green money from the Black Effect podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, Chuck, you left everybody hanging. You said that you had a cliffhanger about something that happened in the 50s that really kind of revved the beetle up into hyper drive, which I think is a thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I said mid-50s. It was really 1959. And anyone that has been around the advertising industry or even knows a little bit about it or watch Mad Men, knows that there was a series of brilliant, brilliant ads brought forth by the ddb. Almost said insurance agency, ad agency that. I hate to say this, but they leaned into what people didn't like about the Volkswagen and tried to make that a selling point. And they did so to tremendous success.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was a real game changer. Yeah. So this, I mean, like Everybody in advertising knows about this, and a lot of people outside of advertising know about it because it's just talked about so much. And the reason why it was a great ad campaign. And just visually speaking, they used all sorts of different techniques that were very much different than what you would normally find to sell American cars, which were huge land yachts at the time. This is, I think, the first compact car that America ever encountered. But like you said, they really kind of took some of the criticisms of the Beetle and turned them into selling points. One of the first things they said was that it's ugly, but it gets you there. So this. This was just one example of what came to be called an anti ad campaign. It was like the. What was that Paul Reiser movie from the 80s where he, like, just turns the ad world on his. On its head by just speaking the truth about the products he's selling. Do you know the one?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. What it was like an ad for Volvo was, they're. They're boxy, but they're good.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember that movie at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can't remember what it was called. It doesn't matter. But it was basically a movie based on this, even though it was never meant to be like a fictionalized version of it. I think it gave the screenwriter an idea is what I'm saying.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, I get you. One of the ads became. And I guess it was the most famous one. It's not the one I think of first, but it was named Ad of the Century by Ad Age. It just said think small. And the one I remember most specifically was. And not by seeing it live, obviously, because this was before my time, But I just remember seeing, I guess reading about it or something, but it was just a picture of the VW Beetle and it said lemon underneath it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Which lemon is, you know, a car that kind of sucks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. So I'm not sure what they were going for with that. Can you explain?

[Josh Clark]

Well, I don't know. I mean, the same as the other ones that say ugly is only skin deep, you know, they were just sort of playing upon people saying it was ugly or saying it was. You know, I don't know if people were saying it wasn't a quality car, because Lemon definitely indicates, like, it doesn't run well. So that was a real sort of extra brave, I think, even compared to the rest.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, even. I don't get that one at all. It doesn't make any sense to me. I'll have to go look further into it.

[Josh Clark]

What's your search term. Can someone explain to me why they.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'll write it out exactly like that.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I mean, I don't think it's that much different than saying it's ugly.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it is, because ugly, it's like that's all just a point of view. It's subjective. And really, ultimately, if the car runs well, a lot of people don't care what it looks like a lemon. Everyone cares that the car is not going to run well. It does not. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. But. But I'll figure it out and I'll report back. How about that?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, maybe that's why I remembered it, because it didn't make any sense.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Yeah. And I guess you ended up buying one, so there you go. Well, my favorite one was Live below your means.

[Josh Clark]

That's pretty fun. But who wants to do that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I'll tell you who wants to do that. People who essentially were the basis of the counterculture, the people who were the Beats a few years earlier, started to grow up, started to go to college, were very highly educated, but still did not want to follow in the exact steps of their parents. And the Beetle kind of gave them, well, a vehicle out of their parents shadow to kind of forge their own path. It was basically a finger to the crew cut. Buying a Beetle was in the early 60s.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And it's very weird that my parents bought one brand new in 68 because they were not that at all. My dad was the crew cut, like literally. And I don't know, they weren't counterculture. Like I have no idea. I mean, maybe my mom thought it was cute, maybe my dad did. I have no idea. I'm gonna have to ask my mom about that. But cost wise, it's probably because of the cost, because they didn't have a lot of money. And in 1964 you could get a Beetle for 1,565 bucks compared to about 2,400 for a Ford Mustang at the time, or close to seven grand for a convertible Lincoln Continental. So it was definitely affordable. And I'm sure that's probably why they got it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And so they started selling a ton of these things. In 1968, they sold 420,000 just in America. And by this time, by this year, around the world, it was the best selling car in the world. This was 20 years after Heinz Nordhoff took over. So we went from essentially this Nazi car to the best selling car in the world in two decades, which is quite a, quite a feat.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. Just a year after that, it got a big bump when Disney came out with the Love Bug movies. The initial one was just the Love Bug and Herbie, of course was the name of that 63 Beetle that. If you haven't seen those movies, they're like those 60s, early 70s Disney movies. They're kind of fun, but they're not great. But Herbie was definitely a lovable car. And you can still see Herbie versions driving around with the two off center stripes and whatever the number in the circle was. I can't remember what its racing number was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Six' three or 53.

[Josh Clark]

Well, it was probably 63 because it was a 63 Beetle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm more of a Snowball Express man myself. Have you ever seen that one?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a good one. Okay, okay. Just check that one out and thank me later.

[Josh Clark]

I bet this stuff is all on the Disney app. Don't they have all their classics on there?

[Chuck Bryant]

Snowball Express. For sure. Watch that one and then watch the North Avenue Irregulars. Those are both.

[Josh Clark]

I do remember that one. I love that movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, so if you love North Avenue Irregulars, there's a good chance you're going to like Snowball Express. I guarantee it.

[Josh Clark]

One thing about the movie though was it was a. It wasn't a radio controlled car. Like it's driving around by itself. That's the whole concept that there's a car, it's kind of alive and you might think, oh, cool, they figured out how to, you know, remote control this car. It was actually a movie making trick where they have somebody down out of view of the windows, kind of in the backseat. Like a stunt driver driving that thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we say that because there's a bunch of people on the Internet saying this is the world's first self driving car. And they're just wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, I didn't know that. People claim that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, wrongly. What about Mexico, Chuck? Because it turns out that Mexico and the Beetle go hand in hand. I didn't know that though.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you didn't know that?

[Chuck Bryant]

No. I mean, no, I didn't. I'm not going to even try to BS my way out of it. I did not know that.

[Josh Clark]

I am surprised that you've been to Mexico City and that you did not notice the inordinate amount of VW Beetles driving around.

[Chuck Bryant]

I just saw a forest.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's what I was kind of one of the things I was looking forward to when I went to Mexico City for the first time because I heard There were just like VW beetles everywhere. And there are. Because they were made there until 2003, which is remarkable. Like you can buy a 2003 final year edition Mexican Volkswagen Beetle. I went online immediately and you can buy one for like 15 grand that I saw that looked to be in pretty good shape. And that's kind of all I want now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, good to know somebody's got a birthday coming up in March. Yeah, they actually. The factory in Pueblo, Mexico, which was the first plant outside of Germany or the largest plant outside of Germany. It outlasted the one in Wolfsburg. I think the one in Wolfsburg shut down or the. Sorry. Yeah, the one. It was in Stuttgart. The Wolfsburg plant in Stuttgart. It shut down in 1974. And like you said, the Mexican plant kept going until 2003. So.

[Josh Clark]

Amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And again they stopped selling new beetles in the States in 1979. But Latin America is like, we still love them. So keep them, keep them coming. Mexico and Mexico said, right on.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. I know I mentioned earlier sort of the dune buggy conversion that some people have done. The initial guy, I guess, or I don't know if he was the first one, but the guy that really got famous for it was a California kind of car guy and racer named Bruce Myers. And he was a dune buggy guy. He built a kit car using a Beetle chassis and kind of reconfigured the shell. If you've ever seen like Wonderbug, the Sid Marty Croft show from the 1970s, it's that kind of dune buggy, but it was called the Myers Manx. Very, very popular, especially in California after He won the Baja 1000 in one of those in 1967. And you can. I went to the Myers Manx website. They are building a new one, the first one in decades. It's called the Manx 2.0 EV.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it is. Did you see this thing?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I did. They're amazing.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man. I immediately was like, should I put a deposit down on this thing? It's like 500 bucks to put down a deposit. $74,000 starting price. So I immediately was like, oh, I don't think so. I'll just admire them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right? Yeah. They had another one. I can't remember what it was called, but it was like 125 grand starting or something. These are like. These are like dune buggies, electric dune buggies, essentially. And I'm not sure that they go off road. I didn't have that impression.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah, Yeah. I mean, I think it's going to. If it's a Manx, it'll. It'll do all you want.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, well that's good.

[Josh Clark]

It's got a pretty. It's because it's so small, it's going to have a limited range like 125 miles. But if you're a listener out there and you end up getting one of these, I will meet you wherever you are in the United States to ride around in it with you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, cool.

[Josh Clark]

There you go putting out that offer right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think we should talk about a few stats, a few records that VW put out. Sure. Well, one thing was that they kept kind of upgrading or updating or tweaking the Bug in all sorts of ways. But if you really look at the first Bug that came out in the 40s and you look at the bugs that, that were produced until 2003, they don't look very different. It's essentially the same car, which is why it's considered the longest selling car of all time. It's the greatest selling of all time. I think they sold 21 million plus beetles over the, over the production run. But it's like it was essentially the same car. And so they would tweak it and release these limited editions once in a while. One was the sports bug, one was a bicentennial bug, and then there was one that came out in 1977 called the Champagne Edition. And I looked into these and it seemed like maybe that had like a different exclusive paint color or there was a slight tweak to the trim package or something. The Champagne Edition came with a Coke mirror and a vacuum shaped metal straw. But other than that they seem like just regular Beetles.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean it was a convertible, but there were other convertibles. I always wanted a convertible too because, you know, back in those days with the Beatles, it was just like a couple of twists of a knobs and then you manually just sort of threw it back over your head. Never was able to get a convertible. You're right about the body style never changed. The tail lights would change shape a little bit here and there and that's kind of one of the ways you could tell what year it was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

But other than some sort of headlight, taillight stuff, it was basically the same shape. Even through the Super Beetle. They might have been a slightly different shape. They're a little bit bigger, I think, but not much. Cause I had a Super Beetle in it. It's not like it was roomy, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And you had to be paying attention to probably spot the difference between a Beetle and a Super Beetle, unless they were parked next to each other, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. But VW Beetle owners were and are still very much known for being very into them and sort of knowing that kind of stuff. It's sort of like it wasn't just a car usually it was like something that you adored and were into and you could get parts cheap and, you know, generally work on it yourself, because when you looked at that engine, it looked like it had like nine or ten parts total. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And apparently VW dealerships kept all parts in stock from all years, essentially. They had huge, huge stockpiles of parts. So you could always be like, well, I can at least go get this thing fixed pretty cheaply.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And we should probably close with a car that you owned. Or at least Yumi bought that thing, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That was Yumi's car, the new Beetle.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was cute.

[Josh Clark]

That doesn't surprise me. It was super cute. And it just fit Yumi to a T, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, she would do donuts in that thing all day long. It had the best, like, turn radius.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really?

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, yeah, it would turn fine, but she didn't actually do donuts as far as I ever knew.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no. I knew that part wasn't true, but I thought it had, like, a noted turn radius or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. You just got me on that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I did. But one thing it did have, Chuck, was a little vase, a little flower vase next to the steering wheel. Do you remember that?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's very cute. And I think they look pretty cool. I wish they would have made it a little more traditionally looking like a bug. Like, the couple of things that bothered me, and this is nitpicky as a Beetle guy, was the. The flush headlights and the flush tail lights. I always love that they stuck out before, but aside from that, I think they honored it quite well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they did an update in 2011 that I thought was pretty cool, too.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know if I saw that one. I have to look that one up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, so you look that up. I'm going to look at the text of your square back Beetle station wagon. Yeah, I'm going to look up that Lemon. That confusing Lemon ad. Okay. And there might have been something else, so I'll have to go back and re. Listen to this.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I got one more quick little thing, because if you have ever been in a Beetle or owned one, and this is something I didn't know until Dave pointed this out, there's a very particular smell that when I stick my head in a Beetle, it's just like it zaps me back. It smelled like no other car made on the interior. And apparently that came from the cushioning of the seats. It was made out of coconut hair. And I remember seeing that coconut hair, like, falling out from under my seats and stuff. But I never knew that was what the smell was due to.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did it smell like coconuts or it just had this distinct smell?

[Josh Clark]

Just a distinct smell. I think it was the vinyl combined with that coconut hair. It was just super, super distinct.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very nice. Well, I guess we'll chill. Do you have anything else?

[Josh Clark]

No, that's it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, since Chuck started nostalgizing, then he just accidentally triggered listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. I'm gonna call this, I guess a follow up on Madman Muntz because this is a pretty fun email. Hey, guys, Big fan of the show. I was very excited listening to the topic on eight tracks and was thinking silently, they better mention Muntz. They better mention Muntz. Because Earl, Madman Muntz was born here in Elgin, Illinois. He led a very colorful life. And his part of the eight track story is only a small portion of that wildlife. He was an innovator in giant screen televisions, cellular telephones for cars, and satellite receivers. He started as a car salesman, and this is the basis of the typical crazy used car salesman thing. And one of his slogans was, I buy them high and sell them low. It's more fun that way. Don't tell Mrs. Muntz. And she pointed out he failed to mention what Mrs. Muntz he was talking about because I think he had seven wives.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think I saw that when we were doing the eight track research.

[Josh Clark]

What, that ad?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, that he had seven marriages, I think. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You know, I'm not one to blame a divorce on a person, but if you've been married seven times, you may be the problem.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know? Sure.

[Josh Clark]

He would smash cars with sledgehammers, wear a tricorn hat with red long johns. So he was, you know, he supposedly invented the wacky car salesman guy routine. That's pretty cool. So Mad Men Muntz will be the subject of the Elgin History Museum's podcast, Echoes of Elgin on August 1st of this year. If you want to learn a little bit more. And this is coming from Rebecca Miller, who is the museum educator at the Elgin History Museum.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very neat. Thanks a lot, Rebecca. Chuck, I have to say, I have a terrible feeling that we're going to get a lot of follow up emails saying it's pronounced Elgin.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, is it Elgin?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know, but I could just totally see it.

[Josh Clark]

All right, well, just pretend I said Elgin.

[Chuck Bryant]

If that's the case, we'll have Jerry go edit hard G's and all the times you said Elgin.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, instead of giving her a full read, I'll just go G yeah and say Jerry. Yeah, just lace that in.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you want to be like Rebecca and bring us up to speed on somebody we just kind of mentioned, but really walk past. We love that kind of thing. You can do what Rebecca did and send us an email. Send it off to stuff [e-mail].

[Josh Clark]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

[Chuck Bryant]

Someone was posting photos.

[Josh Clark]

It was just me naked.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts.

[Josh Clark]

This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious. 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously know it all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talkaboutvaping.org, brought to you by the American Lung association and the Ad Council.

[Chuck Bryant]

In 1920, a magazine article announced something incredible. Two young girls had photographed real fairies. But even more incredible, that article was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who invented Sherlock Holmes. How did he fall for that Hoax is a new podcast from me, Dana Schwartz, the host of Noble Blood, and me, Lizzy Logan. Every episode, we'll explore one of the most audacious and ambitious tricks in history and try to answer the question why we believe what we believe. Listen to Hoax on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast.