The Bug's life

IN FEBRUARY 1933, Adolf Hitler – who couldn’t drive, but was a big fan of the anti-Semitic auto maker Henry Ford – spoke at the Berlin auto show, promising Germans an inexpensive “people’s car,” or Volkswagen. The car, Hitler later instructed the Austrian engineer Ferdinand Porsche, should “look like a beetle.” As design reporter Phil Patton recounts in “Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World’s Most Famous Automobile,” published in paperback this month by Da Capo Press, the curvilinear little vehicle was produced in the early years of World War II, and was soon adapted for military use. (“Volkswagen Military Vehicles of the Third Reich,” a coffeetable book also published this month by Da Capo, shows the jeep-like Kübelwagen and amphibious Schwimmwagen in action.) “The Bug” – as it was quickly nicknamed – “proved to be contagious,” puns Patton, who traces the car’s transformation from a symbol of National Socialist ideology to the bestselling and most beloved vehicle in the world. So how did the Volkswagen Beetle become the “Love Bug”? According to Patton, the car’s success has less to do with its reputation for economy and reliability than with its “childlike appeal.” Since the 1970s, thanks largely to the Bug, small has been beautiful – just

ask the creators of such cute and popular products as the Walkman, the Mac, and the Mini Cooper, all of which were inspired by the loveable little car dreamed up by Hitler.