From Hitler To Hippies: The Volkswagen Bus In America?

From Hitler to Hippies: The Volkswagen Bus in America by David Dyer Burnett, B.A.

Thesis

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin
May 2002

i

From Hitler to Hippies: The Volkswagen Bus in America

APPROVED BY
SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:
____________________
Janet Davis

____________________
Jeffrey Meikle ii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction…………………………………………………………...…2
Chapter One: Volkswagens in Germany…………………………….….13
Chapter Two: Coming to America………………………………….…..32
Chapter Three: The Pre-Hippie Bus……………………………….……56
Chapter Four: The Flowering of the Hippie
Whether early consumers were drawn to the Beetle
32

Reprinted in Marya Dalrymple, ed., Is the Bug Dead? (New York: Stewart, Tabori, and
Chang, 1982), 49.
33
Dalrymple, 7.

34

primarily in reaction to the shortcomings of American cars or in affirmation of the Beetle’s positive attributes is difficult to know.
Many people categorized Volkswagen owners according to an inferred personality profile. Gordon Buford, the man who created Herbie the Love Bug, the sentient Beetle of Disney fame,34 suggests that in the fifties, people willing to ignore the car’s stigmatizing characteristics were considered iconoclastic. He writes:
Volkswagens up to that time were owned by a type of person that was considered eccentric at best, suspected of all kinds of dark thinking at worst. In the age of tail fins, the Volkswagen just couldn’t be for real. The car was the very antithesis of American products and American tastes. It was okay for a joke… but not for an honest-to-goodness car.35

How many Volkswagen owners lived up to this mixed reputation is difficult to tell. I will wager that Volkswagen’s consumer profile was the same