Volkswagen, every mention
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every year anyone David Rosenthal 99Ben Gilbert 18Doug DeMuro 16
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Volkswagen comes up
Ferrari: What happens when you staple a luxury brand to a sports team? (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:07:52 David Rosenthal So like, we'll get into this more toward the end of the episode here, but the Lamborghini Urus, the Lamborghini SUV, that is the same platform as the Porsche Cayenne, which is the same platform as the Volkswagen Touareg.
- ▶ 2:08:06 David Rosenthal You are buying a car that is essentially a Volkswagen Touareg.
- ▶ 2:42:28 David Rosenthal You know, if you take as a axiom that the most important part of the soul of Ferrari is a Ferrari being a Ferrari and not being a rebadged Fiat 500 or Volkswagen Touareg,
- ▶ 3:18:57 Ben Gilbert Volkswagen, 14%.
Google Part III: The AI Company. Google is amazingly well-positioned... will they win in AI? (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:49:51 Ben Gilbert They viewed any new piece of hardware as something that could fail, and so in order to mitigate risks on race day, they used all commodity cameras and sensors that they just mounted on a nearly unmodified Volkswagen.
Porsche (with Doug DeMuro) · Acquired
- ▶ 6:34 David Rosenthal Ferdinand, Porsche, and many other folks in the family and in the early Porsche and Volkswagen, as we will see days,
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 12:57 David Rosenthal Adolf Hitler founded Volkswagen.
- ▶ 13:15 Ben Gilbert I just gotta say, this early in the episode, we may as well, like, point it out already, it is crazy how comfortable we all are driving Volkswagens and Porsches when it was, like, not just a little Nazi-affiliated,
- ▶ 13:46 David Rosenthal Also, less so on the Porsche side of things, more so on the Volkswagen side of things, as we'll see with the history here, there is kind of a pretty incredible re-founding of Volkswagen.
- ▶ 14:08 David Rosenthal Founded Volkswagen.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 15:33 David Rosenthal This original Volkswagen, the Hitler Volkswagen, one of the things you can do when you start a company as a fascist dictator, uh, you can create a new city to house this company in, which he did.
- ▶ 15:54 David Rosenthal That was the, the, what they wanted to call the, the beetle originally.
- ▶ 16:05 David Rosenthal Uh, like this is the city that, uh, Volkswagen is still located in today.
- ▶ 16:10 Ben Gilbert And not just Volkswagen, but like the Volkswagen group.
- ▶ 16:20 David Rosenthal So, Hitler creates Volkswagen, he creates Wolfsburg.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 16:38 David Rosenthal As you would expect, Volkswagen, all the Volkswagen and Porsche operations get repurposed to making military vehicles.
- ▶ 17:07 David Rosenthal Fractures and separates out the Volkswagen operations from the Porsche operations for the next, the rest of the century and into the 21st century.
- ▶ 17:33 David Rosenthal So first on the Volkswagen side, I alluded to this a minute ago, it's a pretty amazing story what happens, because you would think, like, there's no way, you can't imagine that Volkswagen would survive post-World War II, given what we now…
- ▶ 18:29 David Rosenthal And essentially have Britain appropriate the Volkswagen technology and operations.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 19:08 David Rosenthal A singular British person did see the vision for this, and that is the officer who was in charge of the, the, the territory where the factories were, like, on the ground managing it, Major Ivan Hurst, a legendary figure in Volkswagen…
- ▶ 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…
- ▶ 20:04 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.
- ▶ 20:31 David Rosenthal That is now the new Volkswagen.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 21:36 David Rosenthal So that's Volkswagen, but put a pin in them, we'll come back to them in about 50 years.
- ▶ 21:41 David Rosenthal Uh, because there's a lot more to say on, on Volkswagen.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 32:22 David Rosenthal So obviously in Gmunt and then, and then even when Porsche moves back to Stuttgart here in a minute, um, their production capability is not nearly as large as Volkswagen.
- ▶ 34:14 David Rosenthal Right around that same time, Volkswagen's getting back up and running, you know, Hearst is running it.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 34:39 David Rosenthal You know, technical design, consulting work, and really leadership from you individual Porsches here at Volkswagen.
- ▶ 34:46 David Rosenthal I mean, after all, you designed the Beetle.
- ▶ 35:16 David Rosenthal It'll resume doing the technical design and consulting work for us here at Volkswagen.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 35:40 Ben Gilbert The deal is we want your Austrian company to distribute our Volkswagens.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 37:00 David Rosenthal Car dealer network in Europe, not just for Volkswagens, but for all types of automotive brands.
- ▶ 37:16 David Rosenthal Exclusive distribution rights to Volkswagens.
- ▶ 38:24 Doug DeMuro I suspect the reason this worked out is because Volkswagen didn't, I mean, these companies didn't want to be the ones who were distributing all these cars across and doing all this.
- ▶ 38:33 David Rosenthal I think there also might have been a technical reason, which is, um, even though this new Volkswagen was reconstituted as a company, it's only shareholders at this point in time were the German government.
- ▶ 38:48 David Rosenthal State of Lower Saxony within West Germany, which still to this day holds 20% of Volkswagen, which is crazy.
- ▶ 38:57 David Rosenthal Um, yeah, they would IPO Volkswagen, I believe in 1960 or 1961.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 1:07:15 David Rosenthal Let's turn to our good old friends at Volkswagen and jointly engineer and produce this new car with them.
- ▶ 1:07:25 David Rosenthal So in 1967, Porsche kicks off a joint project with Volkswagen to produce a new mid-engined Roadster, which is a smaller, more compact car, and mid-engined, not rear-engined,
- ▶ 1:07:46 David Rosenthal The four cylinder version is going to be a Volkswagen.
- ▶ 1:07:50 David Rosenthal And, uh, ferry puts his nephew Ferdinand in charge of this joint project with Volkswagen, a very fateful decision as we shall see.
- ▶ 1:08:04 David Rosenthal Now what ultimately happens with the nine 14, there's a change in CEO at Volkswagen, and the new CEO definitely sees the value in deepening the relationship with Porsche, and specifically the relationship with young Ferdinand.
- ▶ 1:08:18 David Rosenthal So he wants to continue the project, but he's like, I actually don't think that a sports car makes sense in the VW lineup.
- ▶ 1:08:29 Ben Gilbert Of the nine 14 be branded VW and some of them be branded Porsche.
- ▶ 1:08:33 Doug DeMuro Volkswagen had made a little sports car called the Carmen Ghia.
- ▶ 1:08:44 Doug DeMuro Porsche gets the more powerful one, the nine 1406, the six cylinder and Volkswagen to get the four cylinder, but the decision was made like you said.
- ▶ 1:08:51 David Rosenthal The new VW CEO, he, he actually gets a pretty good deal out of this.
- ▶ 1:08:58 David Rosenthal He gives the car fully to Porsche, but in exchange, VW takes over all of Porsche's distribution in America.
- ▶ 1:09:08 David Rosenthal Huge deal for VW.
- ▶ 1:09:44 Ben Gilbert Meanwhile, on the VW side of things, it's like America, the most important and largest growing car market in the world, we, we now own the distribution for Porsche.
- ▶ 1:12:47 David Rosenthal Okay, so a minute ago, Ben, you said like, oh, this naturally would lead to a merging of, you know, VW and Porsche, and I was like, well, so this was in the late sixties when the nine 14 launches.
- ▶ 1:14:59 David Rosenthal He managed it with Volkswagen.
- ▶ 1:19:41 Doug DeMuro The brands that we know, I think it was just Volkswagen and Audi.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 1:23:59 David Rosenthal The nine 24 was another joint project between VW and Porsche.
- ▶ 1:24:24 Doug DeMuro The saving grace was it was actually a pretty good car to drive, and so over the years, and even at the time, it was kind of accepted as, hey, we all get that it came from a Volkswagen, but sort of the beloved nine 14, and it drives pretty…
- ▶ 1:52:50 David Rosenthal Less enthusiastic about this, but he decides that rather than the old strategy for the entry-level model of sharing a platform with Volkswagen, what if we have the new entry-level model instead share a platform with the nine 11?
- ▶ 2:01:44 David Rosenthal I think because at the same time and just before, they had given a huge shot in the arm back to the performance with the Boxster and the nine nine three, nine 11, and then also done the SUV, which they partner with Volkswagen with…
- ▶ 2:02:04 Doug DeMuro So Pius is running Volkswagen at the time, comes out with the Touareg, which was Volkswagen's SUV, and that's the, that served as the basis for the original Cayenne.
- ▶ 2:02:04 Doug DeMuro So Pius is running Volkswagen at the time, comes out with the Touareg, which was Volkswagen's SUV, and that's the, that served as the basis for the original Cayenne.
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