Was the ’64 Karmann convertible too easy a challenge? Looking for something more involved? Well, step right up, for my uncle in Iowa City has another buddy with this 411! A challenge for sure. Ayuh, it is indeed for sale!One thing is for sure–you’d be the only 411 at the cruise night!
My best memory of the 411 isn’t the car – it’s the commercial that was done to introduce it. A rather humorous stop-motion animation starring King Kong to make the point that this was the first “big” Volkswagen. Said animation was done my a fellow named Mike Jitlov, a cousin of mine. Which I didn’t know at the time, but found out a couple of years later in the science fiction convention circuit.
A very talented guy, unfortunately his business sense wasn’t up to his animation abilities and he usually ended up losing out to the usual Hollywood sharks. And then computer animation pretty much made his talent redundant.
You Tube has the ad, although it isn’t credited to him:
That’s a neat advert Syke,your cousin’s talent shows,it must have been pretty hard to do before CGI .A PE teacher from grammar school had an orangey red 411 not sure if the paint had faded or it was meant to be that colour.Unlike the Physics teacher’s Beetle this one had 12volt electrics and didn’t need a couple of boys to shove it round the car park to fire it up
The first car my mother ever bought new was a VW Type 4, coupe, yellow. I was just preschooler, but I have found memories of the car, and such strong memories that to this day that distinct ’70s VW new car smell comes to mind at the sight of one. They loved the car, but traded it after they couldn’t find a mechanic in town with the necessary training to maintain it properly. It was certainly a roomy tin can.
On a side note, after I viewed the ad mentioned above, I saw this ad for a 1600 (gotta watch out for falling down the YouTube hole!). Is this not the best used car video you ever saw for such a common man’s car? http://youtu.be/oHnbe56iYhA
While I don’t have any experience with the 411 (Type 4), I did spend a number of mornings and evenings riding to/from high school in the “way back” of one of my teacher’s cars, a Type 3 Squareback, which was very similar in layout. The Type 3 of course used the “pancake” version of the Beetle engine, where the Type 4 had a new engine design (a variant of which would later find its way into the Porsche 914).
I grew up in a town that went from 780 population to 10,129 in six years in what was an old Dutch tomato truck farm outside Chicago during the 1970s.
I was surrounded by adults who had roots in Europe and moved to Chicago to get away from the Nazis, or were stationed as soldiers after the War. A lot of my friends parents spoke German, Dutch, Spanish and Italian. It was racially diverse as well, which was a rarity. Even my church was one third African American and Puerto Rican, as was one of the pastors.
So, I grew up around a lot of VWs, Volvos, Mercedes Benzes, SAABs, MG, and other imports. My dad had two Beetles during my childhood. Our good friends drove Volvos and SAABs, but then I do remember them being Swedish – so there you go.
I remember the 411, because our Norwiegen next-door neighbor drove VWs and as a WWII vet, and fluent in Northern European languages, was stationed in Germany after the War. He was a retired professional teletype operator who also lived in Japan’s Northern Islands in order to listen into the Soviets.
He had two 411s, a VW van and a couple of Beetles.
Across the street lived a sweet Hausfrau raising two girls about my age as well. They drove VWs, Porsche 911s, and a VW van.
Next door to them lived a Dutch couple who went through nightly German Luftwaffe bombings hiding from the Germans, escaped as kids, spoke Dutch at home and wouldn’t touch a German anything, including their cars. The Miendendorfs drove Fords.
Uh – where was I – oh yeah, the 411s that the Norwiegen Delfs drove…
S L O W! Painfully slow! And rusty! Perhaps it was because he kept them around for years in the Chicagoland rust belt, but Herr Delf had a couple of rusted 411s to take us around in. He was our ride to scouts and since he was retired before everyone else, was always around if we needed an adult to supervise us. (He seemed to yell a lot, but was only about 5 foot tall, so we weren’t afraid of him – ever.)
So Herr Delf’s 411s rusted away, especially behind the front wheels. Within a few years he had huge holes he had to Bondo screens into. His 411s seemed to always have been primed along with their original paint. One 411 was light blue, and the other one was silver.
All the VWs I grew up with were painfully slow, regardless of model. Everyone who had one would remind us of the high quality of workmanship within each, but as a kid I couldn’t understand why anyone would drive anything that threatened your life and limb on any Chicagoland expressway. I was actually a bit afraid of riding in a VW and getting onto an express ramp. The 411 was a rusty slow piece of work, is what I remember.
I never thought they were good vehicles. In my years of growing up around VWs, I saw reasons to have the Beetle and the Van, but never those rear drive sedans.
As a kid you don’t really think too much about stuff like nationalities. You pretty much accept that the Villareals spoke Spanish, the Miendendorfs spoke Dutch, the Delfs spoke Norwiegen, my mom’s family spoke German, there were Italians living on the Hill, the Puerto Ricans lived on the East side, Dad’s favorite restaurant was Swedish, we attended a Dutch Reform church often, and that my beloved Sunday School teacher where my grandmother played piano was African American. They just were who they were.
Driving around in imports was just a given, and some of them, like the 411 were as sucky as anything from Detroit – USA.
That anti-German attitude of the Dutch family in your neighborhood doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. After he left the Chevrolet dealership, about six months later my father was offered a new Volkswagen franchise in the town of Indiana, PA. This would have been a wonderful opportunity. Indiana was a college town (Indiana University of Pennsylvania), very urbane (more so than Pittsburgh, 35 miles to the west), and already had the region’s Mercedes-Benz dealership. Back in the mid-60’s it was just about a invitation to coin money.
After a couple of days thinking about it, dad turned the offer down. Why? He couldn’t see himself selling the product of the same bunch of people who wounded him at Monte Cassino 22 years earlier, and really held a quiet grudge.
What would really get him started is that Johnstown had a large, very well-off Jewish community, and they were the bedrock customers of the Indiana M-B dealership. Dad could never understand how anybody Jewish could bring themselves to drive a Mercedes-Benz.
I can answer why!
(Gee, I’m so glad I don’t have to post this with TTAC anymore, as Herr-What’s-His-Ego, would have blacklisted me again!)
You see, the folks who were exterminated as Jews were, first and foremost, GERMANS. As Germans, these people who were rounded up and sent to camps were just like any other German – a grumbly, but obedient German folk, little different than the heritage of their ancestors. A whole lot of Germans were exterminated because they fit a label, not that they lived a lifestyle. Many Germans were about as Jewish as most any other Jewish folks living anywhere, except perhaps in Israel today. But not attending a synagogue, no longer reading the Torah, not married to a Jewish spouse wasn’t good enough – you were still considered a Jew by German standards, so off you went.
The Germans exterminated their NEIGHBORS, first and foremost, because of the perceived differences. They went after anything Jewish, then anything Gay, then anything not Nazi – they went after anyone that was different. And, if you go to Germany today, like I did, and live there a while, like I did, you will still see a culture that is quietly uncomfortable with neighbors who are different, or are not obedient in public. The Germans – killed the Germans – and it was the labels they gave the innocent people they exterminated, that we still end up using today. A lot of these victims didn’t view themselves a merely Jewish, and a lot didn’t consider themselves Jewish at all. Of course they would show up at the Haupbahnhof at the correct Saal at the required time and pushed off to a camp – they are German, and that is what Germans do!
So, a Jewish person is only a Jewish person to someone who cares about it enough to make it an issue. When we use labels identifying specific groups that others give us, we often make the same mistake of grouping them as though they somehow do have a commonality among them. NOPE! They are just like you and me, 99.999% of the time.
As to my Dutch neighbors, they didn’t have an attitude that was anti-German, they had a lifelong fear of going into basements, hearing loud booms, a fear of hearing someone speak German, and a real reason based on childhood experiences that resulted in permanent scarring. It wasn’t nationalism. It was a far deeper pyschological response that we see in any child that had to endure an unbelievable series of tramas. To ask Henri to buy anything German was like asking a child disfigured from a fire, to becoming a fireman.
Pure reason, as championed by so many “progressive” minds, uncoupled with humanity, lead to an evil outcome, almost every time. It was pure reason to believe in what the Nazi did to other cultures. Pure reason has killed millions of innocent people during the 20th Century.
Now – that is what I know, based on what I have learned from my childhood, my neighbors, my German educational experience and my observations of US and of German cultures. My opinion. If it offends someone, I apologize.
Thanks for the tremendous insight.
Wow, I’ve never thought of it that way before. I agree with Dave M, that was a tremendous insight, thank you.
FYI, Herr Schmitt got deposed from his spot at TTAC a few months ago.
P.S. Have to agree with Dave M. and NZ Skyliner. A very tremendous insight.
Getting back to the car…. funny how if the 411 was “four doors, eleven years late” the wagon didn’t even have that. Or interestingly long quarter glass either – just two doors and a pillar right where it would be if it had four.
Yeah, I never understood why there was a 411/412 four-door sedan, but the wagon was a two-door.
Especially since the Type 3 Squareback had that covered, while Opel and German Ford had just launched 4-door wagons.