Re: VW/Audi setting up fund for slave laborers (news)

["Brandon Hull" <brandon@cardinalventures.com>]

>>scratch.  As I recall, the article concludes that these guys were
>>responsible for the existence of what today is one of the world's great
>>automakers, without taking any equity or salary beyond their military pay.

>That, and the historic comment made by Ford upon an offer to buy >the VW
>operations, post-war, being that it was 'not worth a damn'... I >wonder
what
>their official view on that matter is nowadays...

I just re-read the AQ article.  It turns out _any_ allied companies could
have bid on VW.  It was essentially ownerless: It had been wholly owned by
the now-illegal Nazi party and was earmarked as a candidate for reparations.
Many allied companies looked at it, and Rootes came closest to actually
making an offer.  But the British officers running the company had obtained
a special four year exception from the reparations program in order to
stabilize the company, which lessened the appeal to most buyers who would've
just pillaged the equipment.  BTW, these officers were really something:
Rescuing body panel dies from barns in the soviet sector, manufacturing
their own bootleg Solex carbs, negotiating wild deals with the military
government.  By  1946, they were making 1000 Beetles a month.  Interesting
barely Audi-related content:  Of the 1000 or so Beetles made during the war,
a significant proportion were four-wheel-drive, built on the chassis of the
military vehicle which was the main output of the VW plant, later marketed
commercially as "The Thing."

Brandon Hull
'91 Audi "ersatz" S2 in progress if everyone involved would finish already
with summer vacations.