At the Berlin Auto Show in 1938, Adolf Hitler presented the prototype for a small, oddly shaped, inexpensive family car that all good Aryans could enjoy. Decades later, that automobile—the Volkswagen Beetle—was one of the most beloved in the world. Bernhard Rieger examines culture and technology, politics and economics, and industrial design and advertising genius to reveal how a car commissioned by Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche became an exceptional global commodity on a par with Coca-Cola. Beyond its quality and low cost, the Beetle’s success hinged on its uncanny ability to capture the imaginations of people across nations and cultures. In West Germany, it came to stand for the postwar “economic miracle” and helped propel Europe into the age of mass motorization. In the United States, it was embraced in the suburbs, and then prized by the hippie counterculture as an antidote to suburban conformity. As its popularity waned in the First World, the Beetle crawled across Mexico and Latin America, where it symbolized a sturdy toughness necessary to thrive amid economic instability. Drawing from a wealth of sources in multiple languages, The People’s Car presents an international cast of characters—executives and engineers, journalists and advertisers, assembly line workers and car collectors, and everyday drivers—who made the Beetle into a global icon. The Beetle’s improbable story as a failed prestige project of the Third Reich which became a world-renowned brand illuminates the multiple origins, creative adaptations, and persisting inequalities that characterized twentieth-century globalization.

People's Car studies divergent populist responses to land acquisition for industries in rural India. It contends that landownership enables small landowners to aspire and look forward to social mobility in the non-farm sector, which are contingent upon industrialization. The protests against land acquisition, thus, have contradictory tendencies.

This book is the first ever illustrated study on the often photographed - but never fully explained - mechanical marvel, the Mercedes-Benz G-4 cross-country touring car, the vehicle that carried Adolf Hitler across much of Europe before and during World War II. Culled from the rich photo archives of Daimler-Benz, as well as from captured German albums in U.S. archives, this work depicts the G-4 in fascinating images and detailed text. Volume 2 will cover the Daimler-Benz 770K Grosser Mercedes. ILLUSTRATIONS 300 b/w images

Account of how and why cars kill, and why the automobile manufacturers have failed to make cars safe.