Thinking Small. The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle, Andrea Hiott (ISBN 9780345521422, Ballantine Books)

I read about this book in the newspaper when it originally came out in Dutch in 2012. When I was young an uncle had a Beetle and I liked driving around in the car. The boxer motor really generates a unique sound. As a result this book caught my interest and I bought it. But then it disappeared on the ever growing stack of books to read. Until a month ago when I picked it up and read it. I have to say the book turned out to be much more than I expected from it. It is not just a history of the Beetle but more a history of Germany and of the USA and of German and American culture. Of course it is only covering a limited period of time starting with the birth of Ferdinand Porsche in 1875 and ending in 2012 with the unveiling of the Volkswagen Beetle (A5). The book follows all the main characters involved in the development of the original Beetle in Germany before and after the second World War and then also covers the export of the Beetle to the US and how it changed from the Nazi car no one wanted to a symbol of freedom and the hippy culture in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of the car as mass individual transportation and the enormous impact this had on society. We follow the rise of marketing and in the US and its focus on buying products as a road to happiness. American car companies were bringing out new models that people had to buy every few years and the Beetle, basically unchanged for over 40 years became the symbol of a counter movement. This book is well researched and well written and reads like a historical detective story. What makes this story extra gripping and dramatic are also the countless times where the Beetle project almost got cancelled before it got started. Very few believed in the Beetle from the beginning until well after the end of World War 2. Looking at how long car models last, the Beetle with its unchanged design for 40 years from 1938 until 1977 when the Volkswagen Golf replaced it in the Volkswagen range in Europe, is an anomaly. This book is worth every minute spent reading. You don’t even have to like cars.