The Iconic, Complicated VW Beetle

The VW Beetle is the best selling car of all time. The story behind its creation is a bit complicated though. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:15Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:25Josh Clark?

  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.

• 1:43Speaker 02

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

• 1:46Josh Clark?

  Just you, you're a love bug.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, I got you.

• 1:49Josh Clark?

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

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Uh, this was my first car.

• 1:57Josh Clark?

  I know, is that why you selected this?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:14Josh Clark?

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

• 2:17Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:28Josh Clark?

  Liar.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  And then I had a squareback, a type three squareback. I think it was a 75 as well. And that was actually my favorite of them all, but.

• 2:38Josh Clark?

  I'm not familiar with that last one.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Uh, you'd recognize it. It was sort of a, it was, uh, it was their version of a station wagon.

• 2:45Josh Clark?

  Oh, you're talking about the thing?

• 2:47Speaker 02

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

• 2:50Josh Clark?

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

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Uh, okay. Well, I'll send you a picture.

• 2:57Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59Josh Clark?

  That's cool. I guess it was roomy trunk wise?

• 3:02Speaker 02

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

• 3:13Josh Clark?

  So it was basically just the, the shape of it kind of was station wagon-esque?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna send you a picture right now, buddy.

• 3:21Josh Clark?

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

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:26Josh Clark?

  Have you sent it yet?

• 3:27Speaker 02

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

• 3:32Josh Clark?

  Okay. Tell me when you sent it.

• 3:33Speaker 02

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

• 3:37Josh Clark?

  Okay. Um, I have a riddle for you, Charles.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:40Josh Clark?

  What do the foreign words bobble, cosinell, tortuga, sapito, buba, and vochito all have in common?

• 3:52Speaker 02

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

• 3:58Josh Clark?

  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, old timey 1950s, post-war, American suburban dudes would probably beat us up for saying that the Beetle was cute.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:21Josh Clark?

  And 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.

• 4:29Speaker 02

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

• 4:33Josh Clark?

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

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Well, I look forward to your real and your rear response later. But I called mine the Type 3. It was a Type 3 squareback, but the original name of the VW Beetle was Volkswagen Type 1. And the Germans themselves kind of renamed it Der Käfer, K-A-U-M-L-A-U-T-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.

• 5:09Josh Clark?

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

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, the people?

• 5:13Josh Clark?

  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?

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:43Josh Clark?

  And the, the, 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.

• 5:58Josh Clark?

  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.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:14Josh Clark?

  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, like a search tool where you can search keywords and it will bring up every Stuff You 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.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can people use that?

• 6:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so the URL is just too kluge 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.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  You should have made one of those little URL shorteners.

• 7:01Josh Clark?

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

• 7:04Speaker 02

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

• 7:14Josh Clark?

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

• 7:18Speaker 02

  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?

• 7:25Josh Clark?

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

• 7:32Speaker 02

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

• 7:35Josh Clark?

  Oh, I never.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Did you have your volume down?

• 7:37Josh Clark?

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

• 7:40Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 7:42Josh Clark?

  A model?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 7:44Josh Clark?

  A model would be appropriate.

• 7:45Speaker 02

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

• 7:51Josh Clark?

  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.

• 8:04Speaker 02

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

• 8:10Josh Clark?

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

• 8:15Speaker 02

  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?

• 8:27Josh Clark?

  The green back?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  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.

• 8:35Josh Clark?

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

• 8:40Speaker 02

  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 then there are also, you know, various stories, depending on who you want to listen to about whose initial idea 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.

• 9:20Josh Clark?

  Uh huh.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Porsche.

• 9:23Josh Clark?

  Uh huh.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  To design the first Volkswagen. And that Porsche came up with that iconic shape, you know, that round looking weird looking car for the time. And we're so used to them 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.

• 9:44Josh Clark?

  It did. And that was essentially the end of the story. Ferdinand Porsche came up with the design. He also came up with the, the Beetle's iconic characteristics, which is that the engine is in the rear.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:57Josh Clark?

  It's air cooled, which saves on space. You don't have all those tubes or whatever for water, like fuel, 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, it'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.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, supposedly it could fit four adults. That's the, the party line. Well, I guess that's really not the right thing to say there, although it was the Nazi party.

• 10:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  But you know what I mean? It's just an expression.

• 10:45Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  But two adults in that back have to be pretty small adults. The backseat didn't have a lot of room. Didn't go super fast, but it could, 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, you know, 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 990 Reichmarks, not Deutschmarks, but Reichmarks,

• 11:31Speaker 02

  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, for sure.

• 11:39Josh Clark?

  For sure, but still affordable, right? I mean, this is, this is, it's in a, 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 create both this car and ultimately 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, privately owned car manufacturers in Germany,

• 12:23Josh Clark?

  brought them all together and said, "Der Führer 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.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  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."

• 12:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that Hitler took and ran with it.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:00Josh Clark?

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

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Probably not.

• 13:07Josh Clark?

  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.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Well, they didn't have seatbelts either.

• 13:32Josh Clark?

  No.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  At least mine didn't.

• 13:33Josh Clark?

  Hang on to your, oh, shoot, bar.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:38Josh Clark?

  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.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was, 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 Gons, 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.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  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.

• 15:07Josh Clark?

  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.

• 15:22Josh Clark?

  He even went so far as to design a prototype that he actually called the Maycoffer, 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?

• 15:39Speaker 02

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

• 15:42Josh Clark?

  Exactly. And so the, apparently that was based on one of Joseph Gons's patents. So this guy definitely had a lot of contribution to the development of the Beetle. And we're talking, I mean, 1931, his, the Standard Superior was built in 1933. The Beetle started to start to be built in, 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 Gons not credited for this? Why wasn't he hired instead of Ferdinand Porsche? Well, he was Jewish and he was arrested by the Gestapo

• 16:22Josh Clark?

  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.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  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.

• 16:44Josh Clark?

  Sure. And that's what counts, right?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  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 Boreny.

• 17:00Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Good enough?

• 17:02Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  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.

• 17:14Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 17:34Josh Clark?

  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, he's creating this in 1925, like you said, as an 18-year-old. And this one is so.

• 17:51Josh Clark?

  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 Beetle. Cause you definitely laid down all the stuff that later became the Beetle, even though you weren't given credit at the time.

• 18:08Speaker 02

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

• 18:12Josh Clark?

  And they said, nine.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 18:26Josh Clark?

  Uh, I, 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.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  But yeah, I think that's the one I was thinking of like it. What it looks like actually is people VW Beetles are highly, have always been highly modifiable as far as people making them look in, 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. Uh, it, you know, a square front, like a Model T Ford. And that was something that people do to modify their Beetles. And it looks a lot like the standard superior that way.

• 19:13Josh Clark?

  Oh, like the hood?

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:15Josh Clark?

  Turning that? Yeah. Okay. I got you. I got you. I wasn't, I'm not up with the jargon and the lingo here.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Like front end.

• 19:21Josh Clark?

  Hood. Yeah. I don't know this front and end thing.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. That's where the boot is.

• 19:26Josh Clark?

  I think the standard, right. I think the standard superior did have, the squared off hood is the way people call it.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  I'm a front ender. My bad.

• 19:40Josh Clark?

  Um, and then there was one other guy too, who was Austrian. His name was Erwin Komenda. 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.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:08Josh Clark?

  Over time VW would try to get away from that story a little bit.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 20:12Josh Clark?

  But it would come back to them. 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.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  We'll be right back.

• 20:41Josh Clark?

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• 21:03Josh Clark?

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• 21:19Speaker 02

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• 21:41Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 21:44Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 21:46Speaker 02

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• 22:10Josh Clark?

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• 22:33Josh Clark?

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• 22:43Speaker 02

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• 22:55Josh Clark?

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• 23:18Josh Clark?

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• 23:53Speaker 02

  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.

• 24:15Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. And this was the prototype, but I think 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.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:28Josh Clark?

  Like those things, like one mounted the other, and then the Beetle Series 3 came out.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 24:36Josh Clark?

  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 Nazi car, the Beetle was, or something.

• 25:16Speaker 02

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

• 25:19Josh Clark?

  Okay. All right. I was the one throwing eggs at your car.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:24Josh Clark?

  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.

• 25:45Speaker 02

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

• 25:49Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, I was very confused at the time.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So in 1938, they built a factory in Stuttgart to start building this car, like, you know, this tremendous, you know, 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.

• 26:22Josh Clark?

  Because you associate joy-

• 26:23Speaker 02

  They named their car off of that.

• 26:24Josh Clark?

  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.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Right. Not 210,000.

• 26:43Josh Clark?

  No. 210, 210, niner. 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.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:58Josh Clark?

  I just want to make sure no one forgets that.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. And they immediately started sort of reconfiguring the KDF to suit their military needs. So they came out with a different type, so Type 87, which was a four-wheel drive. And I guess that the German officers would drive that one. They had a Type 82, a Kübelwagen, a bucket-seat car. And that was armored. It was on that Beatles, Beatles, like, the band, you get it?

• 27:31Speaker 02

  It 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.

• 27:40Josh Clark?

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

• 27:45Speaker 02

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

• 27:51Josh Clark?

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

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I 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.

• 28:05Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:08Josh Clark?

  Um, so that they also had a modified version of the type eighty two or type eighty. Yeah, type eighty two called the schwimmwagen, the swimming or swimming car. And you you could drive around in the water with it. I saw a picture of some dude in his vintage schwimmwagen. It like in the water and it looks so nerve wracking like the water. The thing is maybe eight inches above the water line. The rest of the car is below the water.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Too close for comfort.

• 28:40Josh Clark?

  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 mates. So I imagine that that dude probably paid a lot for that.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably so. Uh, 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 know I'm sure you looked up pictures of this thing. It had a little, you know, round hatch in the front of the car. What do you call that, the hood?

• 29:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 02

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

• 29:24Josh Clark?

  That's how you remember it's called the hood. That's where you put the wood.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  That's right. That was their slogan.

• 29:31Josh Clark?

  Um, and that would power the car not through combustion, uh, 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.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  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.

• 29:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it did work, but it didn't work very well. And to answer your question, I read a, some article on it. And the the people said that as far as anyone knows, none of those survived. So you would not be able to find one of those.

• 30:07Speaker 02

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

• 30:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it gets even worse because Ferdinand Porsche specifically asked for forced labor to be assigned to build the Volkswagen's because he wanted to keep costs down. So you put all this together, Hitler's directly involved in the creation and manufacture of this, um, this car. They, 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 were like, guys, this is, we have to talk about this because this is not okay to just ignore.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you, you wonder like, could they literally arrest Ferdinand Porsche for this? Um, he was held by French authorities at one point, but he was not convicted of a crime. Uh, but in the nineties, uh, I think it was the early nineties Volkswagen, um, started a couple of different payouts. They paid 12 million German marks, Deutschmarks, 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, uh, Porsche actually, uh, set up a fund even. They were like, yeah, you know, Volkswagen's taken 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.

• 32:02Josh Clark?

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

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah, I think that was it.

• 32:14Josh Clark?

  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.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was in their occupation zone. So it was kind of theirs, I guess. Uh, they renamed the factory, uh, to the, uh, Wolfsburg Motorworks, uh, because of the Wolfsburg Castle that was close by. And that, you know, that, 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.

• 33:06Josh Clark?

  Even I know about that.

• 33:07Speaker 02

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

• 33:16Josh Clark?

  I haven't seen that.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you might recognize it.

• 33:19Josh Clark?

  Maybe. Is it on the hood?

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Hmm, I don't know what that is.

• 33:25Josh Clark?

  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 to 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, took the control of this factory and like ran with it and introduced

• 34:10Josh Clark?

  the Beetle to the world.

• 34:11Speaker 02

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

• 34:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it would actually cough sometimes.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Right, 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.

• 34:38Josh Clark?

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

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, they just had these little vents down on the floorboards and we call 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, it would scorch the ankles.

• 34:59Josh Clark?

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

• 35:02Speaker 02

  I didn't have hair on my legs then.

• 35:04Josh Clark?

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

• 35:08Speaker 02

  No, I know that the, 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.

• 35:24Josh Clark?

  Okay, from a dad?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 35:29Josh Clark?

  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.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:04Josh Clark?

  And Heinz Nordhoff was like, well, let's try this again in a year.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  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 Pahn. 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 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.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  You know, the, those old bathtub Porsches, you know, the design isn't that different than the VW Beetle. They're very round and sort of buggy looking.

• 36:58Josh Clark?

  That's true, for sure. So I think in 1950, they sold 330 of them.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:03Josh Clark?

  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.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:38Josh Clark?

  That's really, all those factors put together are what, what helped them start selling Beetles like crazy in the mid 50s.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 37:48Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  All right, good, because 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.

• 38:10Josh Clark?

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• 39:49Josh Clark?

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• 40:06Josh Clark?

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• 41:22Josh Clark?

  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 hyperdrive, which I think is a thing.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  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 watched Mad Men, knows that there was a series of brilliant, brilliant ads brought forth by the DDB, I 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.

• 42:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was a real game changer.

• 42:17Josh Clark?

  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. Just visually speaking, they used all sorts of different techniques that were very much different than, than what you would normally find to sell American cars, which were huge land yachts at the time. This is the, I think, the first compact car that America ever encountered. But like you said, they, they, 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

• 42:59Josh Clark?

  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 its, on its head by just speaking the truth about the products he's selling? You know the one?

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Hmm, no.

• 43:17Josh Clark?

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

• 43:22Speaker 02

  I don't remember that movie at all.

• 43:24Josh Clark?

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

• 43:37Speaker 02

  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 was, it just said, "Think Small." And the one I remember most specifically was, and not by seeing it, you know, 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.

• 44:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah?

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, which Lemon is, you know, a car that's kind of sucks.

• 44:11Josh Clark?

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

• 44:15Speaker 02

  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 was 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.

• 44:38Josh Clark?

  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.

• 44:47Speaker 02

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

• 44:51Josh Clark?

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

• 44:54Speaker 02

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

• 44:57Josh Clark?

  No, it is because ugly, it's like, that's all just a point of view. It's 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 I'll figure it out and I'll report back. How about that?

• 45:15Speaker 02

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

• 45:18Josh Clark?

  Right, but but it, yeah, and I guess you ended up buying one. So there you go.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Well.

• 45:24Josh Clark?

  My favorite one was live below your means.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  That's pretty fun, but who wants to do that?

• 45:29Josh Clark?

  Well, I'll tell you who wants to do that. People who essentially were the basis of the counterculture, the people who were the 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 a, 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.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  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.

• 46:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  And I don't know, they weren't counterculture like I have no idea. Maybe, 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 that 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.

• 46:39Josh Clark?

  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.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  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 are 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, with the two off-center stripes.

• 47:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  And whatever the, the number in the circle was, I can't remember what its race, racing number was.

• 47:37Josh Clark?

  Six, three or 53?

• 47:40Speaker 02

  I don't know. Well, it was probably 63 because it was a 63 Beetle.

• 47:43Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Okay.

• 47:46Josh Clark?

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

• 47:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 47:50Josh Clark?

  It's a good one.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:51Josh Clark?

  Okay. Just check that one out and thank me later.

• 47:54Speaker 02

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

• 47:59Josh Clark?

  Snowball Express, for sure. Watch that one and then watch the North Avenue Irregulars. Those are both really good.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  I do remember that one. I love that movie.

• 48:06Josh Clark?

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

• 48:11Speaker 02

  One thing about the movie though, was it was a,

• 48:16Speaker 02

  it wasn't a radio controlled car. Like it's driving around by itself. That's whole concept that this is a car is kind of alive. And you might think, oh, cool. They figured out how to, you know, remote control this car. It was actually a whole 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.

• 48:34Josh Clark?

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

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Wow. I didn't know that people claim that.

• 48:44Josh Clark?

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

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Oh, you didn't know that?

• 48:54Josh Clark?

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

• 49:01Speaker 02

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

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  I just saw a forest.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  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. So I heard they were just like VW Beetles everywhere. And there aren't because they were made there until 2003, which is remarkable. Like you can buy a 2003, you know, final year edition Mexican Volkswagen Beetle. I went online immediately and like you can buy one for like 15 grand that I saw that was to be in pretty good shape. And that's kind of all I want now.

• 49:43Josh Clark?

  Okay, good to know. Somebody's got a birthday coming up in March.

• 49:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they they actually the 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 one. 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

• 50:16Speaker 02

  It's amazing.

• 50:16Josh Clark?

  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.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  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 the shell. If you've ever seen like Wonderbug, the Sid and 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

• 51:10Speaker 02

  a new one, the first one in decades. A it's called the Manx 2.0 EV.

• 51:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  And it is. Did you see this thing?

• 51:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I did. They're amazing.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 51:27Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Seventy four thousand dollars starting price. So I immediately was like, oh, I don't think so. I'll just admire them.

• 51:34Josh Clark?

  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 doom buggies, electric doom buggies essentially. And I'm not sure that they go off road. I didn't have that impression.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's gonna, if it's a Mank's, it'll, it'll do all you want.

• 51:54Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, that's good.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  It's got a pretty, it's because it's so small, it's gonna have a limited range, like 125 miles. Uh, but if you're listening 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.

• 52:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, cool. There you go.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Putting out that offer right now.

• 52:11Josh Clark?

  I think we should talk about a few, a few stats, a few records that VW put out.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 52:18Josh Clark?

  Well, one thing was that they, 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.

• 53:03Josh Clark?

  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.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it was convertible, but there were other convertibles. I always wanted a convertible too, uh, cause you know, back in those days with the Beetles, it was just like a couple of twists of 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 taillights 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.

• 53:44Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  But other than some sort of headlight, taillight stuff, it was basically the same shape. Even through the Super Beetle, they might've been a slightly different shape. They're a little bit bigger, I think.

• 53:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  But not much because I had a Super Beetle and it's not like it was roomy, you know?

• 54:00Josh Clark?

  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?

• 54:07Speaker 02

  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 10 parts total.

• 54:29Josh Clark?

  Right, 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.

• 54:42Speaker 02

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

• 54:48Josh Clark?

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

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:51Josh Clark?

  It was cute.

• 54:52Speaker 02

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

• 54:57Josh Clark?

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

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 55:06Josh Clark?

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

• 55:11Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I knew that part went true, but I thought it had like a noted turn radius or something.

• 55:15Josh Clark?

  No.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Okay, you just got me on that.

• 55:18Josh Clark?

  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?

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very cute and they, 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 flush headlights and the flush taillights. I always loved that they stuck out before. But aside from that, I think they honored it quite well.

• 55:45Josh Clark?

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

• 55:51Speaker 02

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

• 55:54Josh Clark?

  Okay, so you look that up. I'm going to look at the text of your square back Beetle station wagon.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:03Josh Clark?

  Uh, I'm gonna look up that lemon, that confusing lemon ad.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 56:07Josh Clark?

  And there might have been something else. So I'll have to go back and re-listen to this.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  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.

• 56:43Josh Clark?

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

• 56:46Speaker 02

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

• 56:51Josh Clark?

  Very nice. Uh, well, I guess, well Chuck's, do you have anything else?

• 56:56Speaker 02

  No, that's it.

• 56:57Josh Clark?

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

• 57:04Speaker 02

  That's right. I'm gonna call this, uh, I guess a follow-up on Madman Muntz.

• 57:09Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Uh, because this is a pretty fun email. "Hey guys, a big fan of the show. Um, I was very excited listening to the topic on 8-tracks and was thinking silently, they better mention Muntz, they better mention Muntz." Because Earl Madman Muntz was born here in Elgin, Illinois. Uh, he led a very colorful life and his part of the 8-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.

• 57:38Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Uh, 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."

• 57:52Speaker 02

  And she pointed out, he failed to mention what Mrs. Muntz he was talking about, because I think he had seven wives.

• 58:00Josh Clark?

  Wow. I think I saw that when we were doing the 8-track research.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  What, that ad?

• 58:06Josh Clark?

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

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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, you know?

• 58:18Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Uh, he would smash cars with sledgehammers, wear a tricorn hat with red long johns. So he was, you know, he was supposedly invented the wacky car salesman guy routine.

• 58:30Josh Clark?

  That's pretty cool.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  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.

• 58:49Josh Clark?

  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.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  Oh, is it Elgin?

• 58:59Josh Clark?

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

• 59:02Speaker 02

  All right. Well, just pretend I said Elgin, if that's the case.

• 59:05Josh Clark?

  We'll have Jerry go edit hard G's and all the time he said Elgin.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, instead of giving her a full read, I'll just go, "Guh."

• 59:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  And say, just, yeah, just lace that in.

• 59:16Josh Clark?

  Uh, if you want to be like Rebecca and bring us up to speed on somebody we just kind of mentioned but really walked past, we love that kind of thing. You can do what Rebecca did and send us an email. Send it off to [email protected].

• 59:34Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 59:50Josh Clark?

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