Volkswagen Beetle, every mention

Porsche (with Doug DeMuro) · Acquired Jun 27, 2023 · 42 mentions

• ▶ 12:22 David Rosenthal Would be to design Ferdinand's vision, the small, affordable car for the people, a Volkswagen, you might say in German.
• ▶ 12:38 David Rosenthal That car would go on to become the Volkswagen Beetle, and the company that contracted Porsche to build and design it was Volkswagen, which was established to do so by Adolf Hitler.
• ▶ 14:08 Ben Gilbert So the Beetle, this, this, you know, people's car.
• ▶ 14:24 Doug DeMuro Especially for cars like the Beetle, which were
• ▶ 14:50 David Rosenthal I believe the Beetle, the original Beetle,
• ▶ 15:12 David Rosenthal The Beetle was the same freaking car until the new Beetle in 1998.
• ▶ 15:15 Doug DeMuro And it's, it's interesting when you think about the Beetle because young people today look at it as like a cute classic car.
• ▶ 15:54 David Rosenthal That was the, the, what they wanted to call the, the beetle originally.
• ▶ 16:24 David Rosenthal They do start production of the Beetle before World War II starts.
• ▶ 16:30 David Rosenthal These are super rare today that you find a pre-war Beetle.
• ▶ 18:36 David Rosenthal Like the Beetle was almost a British car.
• ▶ 18:42 Doug DeMuro The British saw the plans for Volkswagen, for the, the Beetle, and said, no one's gonna ever want to buy that car.
• ▶ 19:25 David Rosenthal He finds one of the pre-war production beetles, the 200 that were made.
• ▶ 20:04 David Rosenthal To leave the factory in Wolfsburg, maybe easier than I thought because the British didn't want it, apparently, and also to place an initial order, a seed order to restart the company for 20,000 beetles that the British military is going to…
• ▶ 20:23 David Rosenthal So not as like a tank, but like not an armored beetle, but like they're going to use it to drive officers and stuff around.
• ▶ 20:37 Doug DeMuro Now, one of the things that I find interesting about the Beetle is that each, Europe was so war torn after World War II.
• ▶ 20:43 Doug DeMuro It was the whole, all these places were in similar situations to Germany in that, like, the people needed to get back to work, they needed to be able to drive and go places, and each European country had their own Beetle.
• ▶ 21:00 Ben Gilbert Wait, these are all based on the Beetle?
• ▶ 21:16 Doug DeMuro But in Germany, of course, the Beetle became a global hit, whereas in those countries it was more, you know, in their era.
• ▶ 21:44 Ben Gilbert And 50 years, that's about how long they would make that one model of the Beetle.
• ▶ 22:22 David Rosenthal A terrible, but B like just the range of design talent that he had, like he designed the beetle.
• ▶ 26:56 David Rosenthal Definitely liked and agreed with his father's vision for a, you know, small car, a car for the masses, a Volkswagen.
• ▶ 27:03 David Rosenthal But, uh, he always had one major problem with the Beetle, which was that it was slow.
• ▶ 27:14 David Rosenthal So during the war, he actually had a custom Beetle made that he drove during the war, uh, with a supercharged engine.
• ▶ 30:23 David Rosenthal He's like, oh, I liked driving my supercharged Beetle.
• ▶ 30:36 David Rosenthal And hey, it also, you know, turns out that, um, well, we built the Beetle, eh, so we know how to work with the Beetle.
• ▶ 30:43 David Rosenthal There are a bunch of Beetle parts around.
• ▶ 30:46 David Rosenthal The Beetle was the, you know, main kind of chassis platform for a lot of military vehicles for, for Germany during the war.
• ▶ 30:51 David Rosenthal What if we take a lot of those parts and, um, the basic architecture of the Beetle, which is a rear-mounted, air-cooled engine,
• ▶ 31:09 David Rosenthal For some context on this, you can buy an old beetle today for, I don't know, 10, 15,000 dollars at auction, maybe even a beetle, like a classic one from the fifties or sixties.
• ▶ 31:30 David Rosenthal The, the gulf between a beetle and a three 56.
• ▶ 31:43 Doug DeMuro They made literally a zillion Beatles.
• ▶ 34:18 David Rosenthal It's, it's like the vision they're gonna, you know, make the Beetle for, for Germany and for the world.
• ▶ 34:46 David Rosenthal I mean, after all, you designed the Beetle.
• ▶ 35:21 David Rosenthal In return, they give that German Porsche company literally the sweetheart deal of a lifetime, a royalty on every beetle sold.
• ▶ 36:14 David Rosenthal Nobody knew that the beetle was going to become the international hit that it would, but, but it also, the German government did know that this was a lot of value.
• ▶ 41:37 Ben Gilbert And it's not just we'll pay you for the cars you distribute that we make, we will pay you for all cars that we make, every Beetle, regardless of whether you distribute it or not.
• ▶ 44:19 David Rosenthal Set all this up and we are going to create all the incentives such that you will plow all of the money, all these royalties we're giving you from the Beatles, et cetera, into building up your production capabilities and investing in R and…
• ▶ 54:24 David Rosenthal Um, a big part of it too was the royalty on the Beatles.
• ▶ 54:43 Doug DeMuro And Beetle continues to be more and more and more popular.
• ▶ 1:21:22 David Rosenthal I mean, he oversaw and launched the new Beetle, uh, like literally his grandfather's legacy, the Beetle.
• ▶ 1:21:27 David Rosenthal He turned over the Beetle model to the, the new Beetle.