ETHAN PECK

Lemon: This Volkswagen missed the boat. The chrome strip on the glove compartment is blemished and must be replaced. Chances are you wouldn’t have noticed it; Inspector Kurt Kroner did. There are 3,389 men at our Wolfsburg factory with only one job: to inspect Volkswagens at each stage of production. (3000 Volkswagens are produced daily; there are more inspectors than cars.) Every shock absorber is tested (spot checking won’t do), every windshield is scanned. VW’s have been rejected for surface scratches barely visible to the eye. Final inspection is really something! VW inspectors run each car off the line onto the Funktionsprufstand (car test stand), tote up 189 check points, gun ahead to the automatic brake stand, and say “no” to one VW out of fifty. This preoccupation with detail means the VW lasts longer and requires less maintenance, by and large, than other cars. (It also means a used VW appreciates less than any other car.) We pluck the lemons; you get the plums.

 

Impossible: A Volkswagen can’t boil over. It’s physically impossible. The reason is absurdly simple: The VW’s rear engine is cooled by air, not water. Since air can’t boil, neither can the car. If you had to, you could drive a VW all day at top speed through a desert. Or edge along in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the hottest day of the year. You may get all steamed up, but not your Volkswagen. Chances are you’ll appreciate the air-cooled engine even more in winter. Air can’t freeze any more than it can boil. So you don’t need anti-freeze. (You couldn’t put any in a VW even if you wanted to; there’s no radiator. And so no hoses to leak. No draining. No flushing. No rust.) In the past, a few VW owners have been amused to find a perplexed gas station attendant with a bucket of water and no place to put it. But we’ve taken care of that in our ’61 model. This year, a windshield washer is standard equipment. It uses water. Let the man fill it up.

 

After We Paint…: You should see what we do to a Volkswagen even before we paint it. We bathe it in steam, we bathe it in alkali, we bathe it in phosphate. Then we bathe it in a neutralizing solution. If it got any cleaner there would be much left to paint. Then we dunk the whole thing into a vat of slate gray primer until every square inch of metal is covered. Inside and out. Only one domestic car maker does this. And his cars sell for 3 or 4 times as much as a Volkswagen. (We think that the best way to make an economy car is expensively.) After the dunking, we bake it and sand it by hand. Then we paint it. Then we bake it again, and sand it again by hand. Then we paint it again. And bake it again. And sand it again by hand. So after 3 times you’d think we wouldn’t bother to paint it again and bake it again. Right? Wrong.

 

Think Small: Our little car isn’t so much a novelty any more. A couple of dozen college kids don’t try to squeeze inside it. The guy at the gas station doesn’t ask where the gas goes. Nobody even stares at our shape. In fact, some people who drive our little flivver don’t even think 32 miles to the gallon is going any great guns. Or using five pints of oil instead of five quarts. Or never needing anti-freeze. Or racking up 40,000 miles on a set of tires. That’s because once you get used to some of our economies, you don’t even think about them anymore. Except when you squeeze into a small parking spot. Or renew your small insurance. Or pay a small repair bill. Or trade in your old VW for a new one. Think it over.