Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us Page #3
- Year:
- 2013
- 60 min
- 56 Views
by developing Volkswagen,
but our job was to help get the
German economy back onto its feet -
for political reasons, of course -
and that was what we were doing.
By the time Hirst left VW,
the company already
had global ambitions.
And its first conquest would be -
of all places - America.
Have you ever wondered
how the man who drives a snowplough
drives to the snowplough?
This one drives a Volkswagen.
So you can stop wondering.
Thanks to a canny
marketing campaign,
thousands of American drivers -
tired of their massive, macho cars -
began to fall in love
with the Beetle.
They were persuaded
that small was beautiful.
And by 1968, when this cheeky film,
The Love Bug, hit the screens,
the Americans had taken
Jim, that's water!
MUSIC:
"Wenn"by Peter Kraus
Meanwhile, Germany itself,
now cut off from the
Communist east, was booming.
Unemployment was down,
production was up.
Ordinary Germans were now richer
and more comfortable than ever.
They called it the
"Wirtschaftswunder" -
the Economic Miracle.
The traumas of the past
were forgotten.
Technicolor consumerism would
sew up the wounds of wartime.
The priority was to look forward,
to buy new homes, new appliances
and, of course, new cars.
This was a crucial period
in Germany's modern history.
By the end of the 1950s,
they hadn't just staged
an extraordinary recovery,
they had done the groundwork
for what is today
one of the most productive and
powerful economies on the planet.
But you might well be wondering,
where was Britain in all this?
After all, we had won the war.
Surely we had a head start,
didn't we?
NEWSREEL:
'On Wednesday, His RoyalHighness the Duke of Gloucester
'opened the first post-war
motor show at Earls Court,
'with congratulations to the industry
on its magnificent achievement
exported since the war ended. '
'50s Britain had never
had it so good.
We were now making and
selling more cars than ever.
At the start of the decade,
we were behind only the Americans
world car-exporters.
But things weren't quite
as rosy as they seemed
in the English country garden.
HORN BEEPS:
as the decade when things started
to go wrong for British industry.
But I don't think that's right.
By then it was already too late -
the rot had set in earlier.
I think it was in the affluent,
comfortable '50s
that the problems really began.
We were, I think, a bit TOO
affluent and comfortable,
a bit TOO complacent -
utterly oblivious to
the rise of our competitors.
Here she is, a wee Scots lassie.
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"Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 May 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/das_auto:_the_germans,_their_cars_and_us_6391>.
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