THE CARMAKERS

Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] We make cars here, a great many cars. Each is exactly like every other until they get into the hands of their owners. Then they suddenly become intensely individual. His car, a very personal thing and unique. But even so, they aren't all for sale. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] They are so much alike that what we learn from one applies to the rest. Which is the reason this one or that one is pulled off at random and tested so that all those different people and places and problems which are still to come are taken care of in advance. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Music] A car maker has problems besides those of production. Success is a problem. Cars add to the smog of our industrial world. In many areas, there are laws now that cars must control their exhausts, burn their fuel better. America was first and with the toughest rules. 6,000 m from the Hollywood Freeway, Volkswagen engineers recreated these conditions, measured them with American instruments, found out how to meet those standards, and surpass them. [Music] Those little holes are instructions. Machines can do almost anything. Some can even make decisions. But the ideas must be brought to the machines and then good ideas are used over and over again leaving the men who had them to go on coming up with new ones. [Music] An engine when assembled turns the heat of burning gasoline into power. The force of these explosions about 100 a second moves parts so intimately connected with other parts that shafts will move and wheels turn. To do it, this engine needs seven bits of information. Among them, temperature, pressure, load, and speed of travel. This engine has its own computer to direct its performance and create the most efficient fuel feed ever designed. [Music] Each engine is designed for one purpose, to move a specific car in traffic or across flatlands or even through remote mountain regions. Before an engine goes into a car, it is inspected and tested repeatedly for mechanical performance and power output. [Music] Everybody knows about machines. They are extensions of human power. A machine can do what a dozen or a score or a 100 man can do. What not enough people appreciate is that machines are expressions of human genius. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] A man couldn't do this. taking 100 times as long. 100 men couldn't do it in the same time. What the man can do is design the machine. This then is what modern man has come to be. There are those romantics who regret the passing of the horsedrawn carriage of the handcraftsman working by himself in his workshop. But in those days, traveling from town to town exhausted the body and depressed the spirit. And the romantic hand craftsman worked 12 hours, 7 days. [Music] The better life starts with the skill of the designer with the conquest of time so that each component arrives at its assigned place at its exact moment. Reliable, inexpensive transportation is the first step in the enjoyment of the new leisure. It gives a man more time for himself and makes him free. This is a vital part of an automatic transmission. It is the first one, the prototype made by craftsmen able to interpret the engineers design as they proceed. And on the line, the model is repeated a thousand times a thousandfold, copying it as often as the market demands. [Music] master craftsmen keep a close check on the workmanship of the automatic machines. Building an automobile means using the talent of scientists and engineers in dozens of countries. The ideas and machines come from all over. [Music] The case which will contain the complexities of a modern automatic transmission must be no less reliable than what it will contain. In use, it will be subject to great pressures and great changes of pressure and this must be accounted for in the design and the manufacturer. [Music] Each must prove itself in a special pressure testing device. Prove that it can take it. [Music] Before you can produce a transmission for thousands of cars and millions of drivers, the transmission itself must be tested against a machine which does to it what a bad road or a car full of people or a steep hill or all of them together will do. [Music] The car takes shape. [Music] Thousands of welds all in the precisely right place every time as only a machine is capable of achieving it will hold the shape on freeways and jungle trails over cobblestones and the washboard floors of desert. [Music] The form is complete. There are details still to be finished by hand even after the finest machine process. [Applause] Paint is more than color. When a car is likely to go anywhere, it must be ready to withstand everywhere. The car which will be bought to cross the muskeg of the Canadian North must be just as able to stand up to the swirling dusts of southern India or the snowmelting salts of New York City. Not every car will need this much protection, but they all get it. It's the only way to be sure. [Music] The first coat must be perfectly smooth to make a base for the other coats to follow. Painting is an old trade, but doing it this well takes science and design and technology like this electrostatic process. The car body is given an electric charge which attracts particles of paint with absolute evenness such as no brush or spray gun could impart. [Music] A man wants a car to last. He thinks paying for it once is enough. For his sake, the parts are tortured to ensure that his wipers will survive more rain than he will ever encounter. His windows will always open when he wants them to. [Music] His neighbors on the road will know which way he's headed through all kinds of weather. [Music] that his engine starts when he needs it. And when he's about to stop, the lady behind him will know it. What's important here is that every piece is going somewhere, that it will be there at exactly the time to meet the other pieces. A man once said that mass production is one gigantic rendevous. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] waiting outside the factory. A world full of drivers. French drivers who must have yellow headlights. for the United States. Special tail lights and sealed beam headlights. Behind these, the line keeps turning out more cars for America and cars tailor made to the laws of Zanzibar, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, and the Leeward Islands. One every 8 seconds. Each car the result of the care and engineering quality that produced it. To learn what happens to a car in a rainstorm, a suction hose duplicates the vacuum which highway speeds induce inside. Testing must be relevant to the real problems as in the smog test. What the skill of the engineers promised in the laboratory must become routine and continue to be fulfilled on the production line. Just as it takes big machines to make cars, it takes big and very intricate machines like this wind tunnel to develop their design. The shape of a car is one key to its efficiency. And efficiency is how little it costs to travel a mile. A car must be able to undo the wind or the wind fights back, pushing it, turning it, lifting it. So, the place to find the right shape for a car is in the wind tunnel, where you can recreate almost every atmosphere or wind condition at will, imitating every capriccious face nature can present. And this tunnel creates more than wind. The outside world can be freezing cold or pink blistering hot, parched dry or clammy wet. This tunnel imitates all those climates right here, right now, over and over as often as we need it. from past 100° and humid to below zero and dry. These 34 engines are going to try to push this car off the road long before it may have to face a sudden gust on a high bridge. It will have met the challenge on a test track and in doing so will have proved out all the others. [Music] What was an idea and then a prototype and then a test model is now a product. Making cars, even small ones, requires a big effort. The economic commitment is staggering and it takes people by hundreds of thousands in more than a dozen cities around the world. [Music] There are factories to serve other factories. This one in Castle provides transmissions to go into cars which are built in three other cities. Out of this picturesque German city of Emden come half the Volkswagen sold in the United States. Once famous for building ships, its citizens now build the cars to fill the ships. Other factories contribute like this one in Englestat and the one in Bronswagen. It started here in Wolfsburg and how it has grown not only here but in the many countries where Volkswagen has come to mean personal transportation. These are the people who keep it growing. What do they have to show for it? Houses, cars, identification, pride, the knowledge that they are part of an industrial family that serves the whole world. People who sell worldwide buy worldwide furniture, fancy food, and the latest best idea wherever it may come from. Table wear from England, dungarees from America. There is a feeling of stability of roots put down in the soil of establishment and problems solved and nearby continued growth the desire to go forward to meet new problems. This will be a new home for the engineers in research and development. Three times in 20 years they outgrew their facilities and no one says this will be the last. It's a long road from design to production line. And here are some models that never made it. [Music] And those models that did are not allowed to stand still. What brilliant minds and hard work in massive investment brought about is tested here and on highways everywhere. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] For the car makers, the road to success is clear. Make them well and the world is your market. One customer at a time. Heat. Heat.