Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us
- Year:
- 2013
- 60 min
- 56 Views
MUSIC:
"Spooky"by Dusty Springfield
# In the cool of the evening
# When everything is
getting kind of groovy... #
The Mini - supreme symbol
of British style, design
and ingenuity.
In 2012, more than 300,000
were sold around the world.
# I've got some plans for tonight
# And then I stop... #
CAR SKIDS:
is that more than 50 years
after the first Mini
rolled off the assembly lines,
they're still made here in Oxford
the place the Mini was born.
It's a global phenomenon, and one
still proudly made in Britain.
But you know the irony?
You know who actually owns
built in a plant 100 years old?
The Germans.
MUSIC:
"Fade To Grey"by Visage
We are living in
an age of German empire.
Amid extraordinary turmoil
in the capitals of Europe,
Germany commands more raw power
than at any time since
This is an empire of German
engineering, German expertise,
built not on the Panzer,
but on the Polo and the Passat.
A new order, symbolised by
the speed, power and beauty
of the automobile.
Buying a car in Germany is not
just a grubby transaction,
it's engaging in an immensely
serious, culturally-rich,
and occasionally rather
beautiful and moving event.
This isn't just a story about cars,
and political clout,
because in today's Europe,
it's Germany that calls the shots.
And as we confront the new
challenges of the 21st century -
an age of cut-throat competition
on a dizzyingly global scale -
what can we learn form
our failures and their successes?
What did we get wrong and
what did the Germans get so right?
# We fade to grey... #
DING!
MUSIC:
"Mr Blue Sky"by ELO
# Sun is shining in the sky... #
When I was growing up in the '70s
and '80s, my dad had a Rover -
the quintessential British car.
So did his father.
# It's a beautiful new day... #
But although I think of myself
as pretty patriotic,
I don't drive a British car today...
# Mr Blue Sky is
living here today... #
And I'm not alone. A few months ago,
a poll asked people what brand
of car they'd most like to drive.
Now, number one was Volkswagen -
they're German.
Number two was Audi -
they're German.
they're German.
Are you beginning to spot the trend?
MUSIC:
"Cars"by Gary Numan
I haven't driven
another... type of car -
it's been Volkswagens,
Audis or Mercedes,
The fit and finish of the car -
in a German car -
for the comparable car
is a lot better.
Well, I went off to buy a new Rover
and they told me I had to wait
about six months for delivery -
this was 30 years ago.
And this was in the garage opposite.
Well, not this one, but the new BMW
was in the garage opposite,
so I bought the BM
and I've bought them ever since.
Germany exports more cars to Britain
than to any other country
in the world.
So why don't we buy British?
Well, how could we?
What is a British car?
Bentley, for instance,
is owned by the Germans.
Rolls-Royce? German.
Jaguar? Indian.
Land Rover? Indian.
MG Rover belongs to the Chinese.
And even James Bond's
favourite car - the Aston Martin -
is owned by the Kuwaitis
and Italians.
Only a handful of tiny,
specialist car-makers remain.
Does this matter, though?
Isn't a car just a means
of getting from A to B?
In many ways, the motor car
has usurped the role
of the work of art
in our modern age.
In that it represents
collective yearnings,
it represents, you know, desire.
It represents an idea of progress,
of faith in technology,
and there's no-one who's got that
more correct and more powerful
and made it more articulate
than the German motor industry.
ELECTRONIC MUSIC
The first car I ever bought didn't
come from an iconic British factory
like Cowley or Longbridge,
but from the German heartland
of Lower Saxony.
Welcome to Wolfsburg,
the home of Volkswagen -
a factory the size of Gibraltar.
VW has come an awfully long way
since it was set up in 1937
under the Nazis,
to build "people's cars" -
Volkswagen for Germany's masses.
Here in Wolfsburg, they've even
set up this "Autostadt" -
a theme park dedicated to the car,
visited by more than
two million people every year.
It's a temple not just
to the automobile
but to the technological glamour
of German modernity
and to the success of
Germany's economic model.
With its gleaming,
futuristic towers,
this "Car City" is
German capitalism incarnate.
And as VW's steely
commander-in-chief puts it,
they want to leave their stamp
TRANSLATION:
We have a clearstrategy called "Strategy 2018".
In the year 2018, we want to
become the world's number one.
The number one in volume,
with more than ten million cars,
the number one in
customer satisfaction,
the number one in
employee satisfaction
even the number one in making money.
Under the generalship
of Herr Winterkorn,
VW are inching ever
closer to their goal.
Last year they made a record
profit - a cool 9.7 billion.
But the irony is that just as the
Mini has now become a German story -
so Volkswagen's post-war success
began as a British story
and its hero was the most
unlikely person imaginable.
His name was Ivan Hirst
and he was a major
in the Royal Electrical
and Mechanical Engineers.
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