I suppose I should have realized this already, but carmakers used to publish brochures not just for all of those people looking to buy cars, but also for the people looking to sell cars, which is actually a pretty key component of buying a car. Volkswagen’s famous ad campaign with Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) was known for its disarming honesty, but there’s a special sort of honesty to be found in these brochures targeted at VW salespeople.
I happened to see one of these from 1970 for the Canadian market, and I was kind of delighted to see some of the unexpected candor in the copy. Unexpected candor! You love unexpected candor!
Also, I appreciate the painfully-obsessive focus on the details of the yearly changes of the Beetle and Bus and other cars, which must have made it hard on the sales-folk because VW was loath to make significant styling changes year-to-year, so you get whole pages talking about larger turn signals, vents (which, to be fair, were added because the new 1600cc engine made a ravenous 57 hp), and added reflectors:
I mean, I absolutely love this shit (in fact, I’m trying to research why VW used those bumper-mounted reflectors just for one year only) but I bet it was rough on salesguys, especially ones that had friends selling Chevys or whatever that changed their look dramatically every year.
The copy even seems to reflect a bit of sarcasm about the mundanity of the changes:
Calling new rectangular front side reflectors “sweeping” changes feels pretty salty to me.
My favorite part of this brochure, though, has to be the repeated mention of how fucking annoying the you-left-your-key-in-the-car ignition buzzer is:
I mean, I’ve had multiple Beetles with this buzzer, and it is deeply, powerfully annoying. I yanked the little buzzer relay out of all those cars because it sounds like a thousand pushy bees trapped in a coffee can. But it looks like that buzzer is even worse in a bus:
This buzzer must have really pissed off the sales people for it to keep getting mentioned like this. I bet there were lots of letters begging VW to consider a chime or a beep instead of something that made people feel like they just lost big at Final Jeopardy.
There’s also a picture in here of a technician with VW’s advanced-for-the-era Computer Analysis system, and I can’t help but think that picture with the reflection on those thick glasses makes the tech look like Sean the Sheep‘s farmer pal.
The sales guide also understood that people would, of course, be cross-shopping cars, and around 1970 is right around the start of when VW would have start to have felt real competition from Japanese imports. They do seem to take the competition seriously:
VW was by far the big kid on the block when it came to imports in the US and Canada, but it’s good to see them taking the competition seriously. The Beetle was a 1938 design, after all, and was starting to really show that, but VW’s build quality was still stellar and most of the imports still couldn’t match it.
Most of VW’s assessments of their competition I think was pretty fair, though I feel like pointing out a noisy engine maybe isn’t something that VW sales people should be making a big thing about. Have they been in a VW?
I DO love unexpected candor Jason!
Also, this is an interesting camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibIQJmah5tE
This post is quite timely, as I just finished reading Thinking Small: The Long Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle by Andrea Hiott. What a fantastic book and history lesson.
Was anyone using chimes or beeps for key reminders in 1970? I feel like those didn’t appear at all until the 80s, and even then they weren’t ubiquitous.
Fantastic! I doubt something like this would pass PR muster these days. I’m not sure candor and honesty are valued the same today.
Get off my lawn!
Best graphic yet. All the way to cold is important.
In English the changes are “sweeping” but in French they are “spectaculaires”!
At least the translator respected the sarcasm, and didn’t put like ‘brossage’ or whatever the French is for literally sweeping.
Dang Jason, that’s a frigid start graphic today!
So where’s the rest of this for those of us who’d like to read the whole thing?
I love the description of the seat-folding procedure on the Austin America but it doesn’t get into why. Basically, the Brits bought their own ADO16s overwhelmingly as 4-doors (although the wagon was weirdly only a 2-door, doubly weirdly considering the Mini wagons in the same showrooms) and headrests weren’t required there until the ’80s.
Also, TIL Canada got the first generation Sunny, as a 4-door no less.
Yes, we demand more! ”The quality was about on par with Viva.”
Look at that luxurious new armrest on the bus. This is when VW started going soft.
I love the frown on the tester of the cramped back seat.
Um Jason I love you but how did you get the correct link and still misspell “Shaun?” Must have figured us sheep would just go along with it.
Jason is obviously very pro-Celtic, anti-Anglican.
Also, for those that haven’t seen it, “Shaun the Sheep” is absolutely brilliant! If you have very young kids in the house, it is one show you will enjoy as much, if not more, than they do.
And when you catch the Shaun the Sheep song earworm, at least it’s fun.
As someone who will enthusiastically explain how my 1992 American Standard Fender Jazz bass has a deeper cutaway on the treble side to accommodate two additional frets and a lengthened bass horn for weight balance, making it unique among Fender Jazz Basses that have looked identical since the 1950s, I can empathize.
This one goes to 24!
It goes to 22. Don’t get carried away, it is a Fender after all. 24 frets would be absolute lunacy. That’s two entire octaves!
Way way back I knew a guy with a very early Carl Thompson, that was basically a J bass with a walnut body and around 29 frets. What a strange beast.
I had a Pearl Export drumset with the curvy lugs AND connecting rods. Those were made for only an year, it seems. I can empathize.
“in fact, I’m trying to research why VW used those bumper-mounted reflectors just for one year only” I’m reasonably sure the taillight was the same in 1969 and 1970, but new reflector requirements were introduced in 1970, and rather than redesign the taillight (which they did the following year) they just slapped those reflectors on there.
They weren’t the same! The 1970 were a one-year only design that did not incorporate a retroreflector into the lens. Every other VW taillight had an integrated reflector in the lens itself – except 1970, when for some reason they were moved to the bumper. In ’71 they got bigger, and replaced the reflector into the lens.
Huh! I wonder if they didn’t have enough real estate in that lens housing for whatever was required in 1970? Regardless, I am confident you will find the truth at your next meeting at the Scarlet Lighter.
This right here, is premium, high grade, uncut Torch at it’s finest.
When the reflector regulations changed, it was cheaper/easier to use up the old lights and housings and add an external reflector. With another year’s notice, they could tool up the larger lights with internal reflector.
The BMW 2002 also sprouted a tacky little reflector until they went to the larger square taillights.
OTOH I think that means they were well qualified to identify such things.
“You think OUR engine is noisy? Wait until you hear the Datsun 1000!”
Edit: I forgot to mention that today’s iteration of the Cold Start graphic is more or less perfect.
aw thanks! I appreciate everyone pushing me to get that graphic just right.
*Chef’s Kiss*
We have high standards around here. 🙂
This one caught my eye and may be perfection.
I love that the toolkit for the Computer Analysis system includes a large, crude hammer.
Excuse me, that is not a “crude hammer”. That is a BARM – a Big Ass Rubber Mallet, a key component of sciencetician toolboxes everywhere. 🙂
Why not just Big Ass Mallet? That way you can go BAM BAM! with your BAM while saying BAM BAM! (much like Laura Dern saying “pew pew” every time she fired her blaster in The Last Jedi.)
Specificity.
We need to differentiate the BARM from the BAPM (plastic) and BAWM (wooden) versions.
I worked with an English Engineer as a Manufacturing Engineer. He wanted to put BTF on the drawings for the assembly of large weldments. Management wouldn’t let it happen. I did manage to include the same sentiment, but with more appropriate words on the shop instructions. BTF = Bash to Fit.
When I was in high school, and hoping to attend General Motors Institute, I took a tour of the Baltimore GM factory, which was building Monte Carlo at the time.
At the very end of the assembly line, they had a big muscle guy with a rubber mallet beating the door edges so they would fit in the door opening.
I asked, why didn’t they just make the doors to fit in the first place. And I got stony stares from the tour guides.
I was not accepted to GMI
Incredible sentence from the perspective of the 21st century.
it was a very different time.
Gas had all the lead, everyone smoked, atomic bombs were set off above ground, kids were disposable, good times!
It’s interesting how these reliable prestige German companies became the bane of a mechanics existence, and how those Japanese crap-boxes morphed into some of the most reliable cars on the planet isn’t it?