Re: Another - our experiences differed.
Yeah, even the small Volkswagens were always very well made. Over here we had the Morris 1000 which I suppose was its British equivalent and still has quite a following;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-31769707
Do you know, Cat's Squirrel, that at the end of WWII, the VW factory in Wolfsburg was in the British zone of operation. The British could have decided to operate the factory but the factory lied in ruins. In actual fact, the factory worker's in conjunction with the British Army volunteered to repair the factory and start up production. The key to being able to repair the factory was that before any major bombing raid, the VW plant workers routinely disconnected a lot of big machinery in the plant and stored it out of the way in the nearby forest. After the war, these workers new where the machinery was stored and were able to bring a lot of it, undamaged back into the factory. They then started building VW Beetles. The Beetles were for the use of the British Officers. In this manner the German workers along with the British officers assigned to the factory were able to get a small flow of new VW's coming off of the assembly line.
In the first year after the war, the VW factory assembled 10,000 VW vehicles. I don't remember where they went other than to British Officers but most of them went somewhere else.
Britain did an evaluation of the factory and though the car was popular with the officers and the locals in Wolfsburg, Lord Rootes of Rootes Motors in England was called upon to make the final determination. He wrote an official document which I believe has been saved for posterity. His bottom line was that he didn't want the Beetle built because it would complete with his line of British automobiles so he wrote a scathing report stating that the VW was too small, too under powered, too German and too highly associated with Hitler and the Nazi's. In no uncertain terms he urged the British government not to get involved with the VW.
The Brits then offered the factory the the Americans and they took it over. For a while, they were stuck at 10,000 units a year but that was not sustainable because of a shortage of raw materials. The American's then offered the car and the factory to Ford Motor Co. Henry Ford the third was in charge. He had his second in command, Ernie Breech (or something like that) evaluate the car. He stated to Ford that "What we are being offered is not worth a damn!!" Henry Ford III turned the offer down. About that time, in 1949, the country of West Germany was formed. Wanting desperately to rebuild and provide work for the German peoplle, the West German government put a man in control, a genius of sorts it turned out, named Dr. Heinz Nordhoff.
Nordhoff moved into the factory and would not accept any house which he was offered to live in. He lived 24/7 within the walls of the factory. He called a meeting of all workers and laid everything on the line. He told them that the odds were against them but if they worked hard enough they would succeed. He demanded total sacrifice to the company but if they did well he promised that they would be well rewarded and within a few years the employees were very well rewarded. Morale in the factory was out the roof.. He said that the VW was an exceptional car, a true people's car and if they could get it into high production people would start thinking of the VW when they thought about Germany instead of thinking of the Mazi's. The West German Government gave VW high priority and lots of financial support. Almost from the beginning, production started multiplying and the quality of the cars was first rate. I believe that in 1950 the production reached 100,000 in one year. A few years later it hit 1 million a year and just continued to grow with just one model, the Bug. I read a book on this subject called, VW, a Small Wonder or something similar to that, maybe just "A Small Wonder, the story of Volkswagen" It was an amazing story to read about. I read it about 1969-70.
Lakey
I just love the way this thread weaves between subjects, almost no two consecutive posts talking about the same thing 
