‘Well done,’ said Ishmael. ‘Can I throw the next one?’
♦
Nordhoff makes a number of extraordinary and, it will be proved, brilliant decisions. First he re-establishes contact with Ferdinand Porsche, appointing him as design consultant and paying his company a royalty on every Beetle produced. (The French had to release Porsche eventually.)
Nordhoff then decides, like Henry Ford of old, that Volkswagen will be a one-model manufacturer, and, more importantly for the cult status of the Beetle, and although he is prepared for some gentle refining of the body design, he wants to keep the old shape. Evolution, not revolution. He sees himself as a polisher of Dr Porsche’s diamond, not as a cutter.
The rest is automobile history — constant refinement but the soul remains the same, that and phenomenal production figures:
1948
19,244
1949
46,146
1950
81,979
1954
202,174
1956
333,190
These are more than just damned lies. By 1956 Germany has replaced Britain as Europe’s top motor manufacturer. The 100,000th Beetle was completed on 4 March 1950. By August 1955 the figure had reached one million. Between 1965 and 1971 the best part of 7 million Beetles had been manufactured. And in Mexico in May of 1981 there are celebrations for the production of the 20 millionth Beetle. Ivan Hirst is in attendance. He allows himself more than a light ale.
♦
Ishmael stood at the gates of ‘Sorrento’, milk bottle in hand.
‘We’re ready for you,’ he yelled. ‘There’s no need to hunt us down. We’re here.’
‘Nicely put,’ said Fat Les.
‘You lot make me sick,’ Ishmael continued. ‘You people with your Range Rovers and your credit cards. Let’s see what you’re made of.’
The petrol explosion had acted as a signal for the Crockenfield Blazers. Ishmael and Fat Les would very soon see what they were made of. Headlamps shone across the valley. Lower, by the bridge and the river, excited dogs ran and howled. Ishmael was ready. From the darkness they could suddenly see two pairs of rapidly approaching headlights. The cars were driving towards Ishmael and Fat Les, side by side, one car driving down the wrong side of the road. The lights were on full beam. Their horns were blaring. Somebody leaned out of one of the cars and fired a shotgun.
Ishmael arched backwards then flung a petrol bomb into the path of the two advancing cars. Flame erupted in the centre of the road and the two cars plunged into the hedges at the sides to avoid the explosion.
‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’ Fat Les said.
Ishmael had to agree. They got in the car.
‘Where are we going?’ Ishmael asked.
‘Not far, look ahead.’
♦
On 17 January 1949 the Holland America Line’s ship Westerdam arrives in New York. In its hold is a grey Beetle saloon, chassis number 1-090195, engine number 1-120847. It belongs to Ben Pon who has been sent to America by Nordhoff to interest dealers in becoming agents for Volkswagen in America. He can hardly stir the slightest interest.
As he circulates New York dealers, who are anticipating an explosion of affluence, of fins and chrome, a casting-off of austerity in favour of motor design that is slick, erotic and occasionally laughable, Pon must surely have thought that Sir William Rootes, and Ernest Breech of Ford who said the Beetle was ‘not worth a damn’, were being proved horribly right. If nothing else these men must have known their market. The response he gets is always the same. Who won the war? We beat the bastards fair and square, now we’re supposed to buy their cars so that they can rebuild their economy. What do they take us for? Bums?
♦
There was a Range Rover parked a little way ahead. Two men were standing beside it. One of them shouted, ‘Stop the car. Stop right where you are.’ Fat Les stopped the car. It seemed to make everyone happy.
The other man called, ‘Get out. Let’s have a look at you.’
They got out to be looked at.
‘They don’t look like very much to me,’ one of the Range Rover men said.
These two didn’t have shotguns. One had a fairly savage-looking piece of chain, the other was carrying a piece of wood about the size and shape of a cricket bat, but it was jagged with nails sticking out of it.
‘They must be the poor relations,’ Fat Les said.
The two pairs of men stood about a cricket pitch’s length apart, gunslingers at a double shoot-out.
‘We may not look like much,’ Ishmael said, ‘but you’d be surprised. You know the problem with chains and bits of wood is that you have to get close before you can use them. You’re not going to get close.’
Suddenly there were petrol bombs in Fat Les and Ishmael’s hands. They threw them. One landed on the roof of the Range Rover, the other just in front of it. The two men ran and dived for cover. It took a while for their vehicle to catch fire, but catch fire it did.
‘Had enough yet?’ Fat Les asked.
‘Not nearly enough,’ said Ishmael.
‘That’s my boy.’
Then they heard the sound of a two-tone horn. Whether it was police, fire or ambulance they didn’t know, but it was time to be going. Fat Les took the remaining bottles out of the car, dropped them in the middle of the road to form a zebra crossing of petrol and broken glass. He threw a piece of burning rag at the petrol. A sheet of flame danced satisfyingly from the tarmac. They returned to the Beetle, drove round the wreck of the Range Rover and set off again into some unimaginable future of love, revenge, class warfare and oral sex.
Seven
Fat Les drove in his inimitable way. At times Ishmael had the feeling again that they were being followed, but nobody in their right mind would take the kind of risks necessary to keep up with Fat Les. Marilyn’s father was not, of course, in his right mind, but Ishmael would surely have spotted a Rolls-Royce on their tail.
‘Where are we going?’ Ishmael asked.
‘I want to see the sea,’ Fat Les replied.
‘Right,’ said Ishmael. ‘Back to the old collective unconscious.’
‘Yeah.’
‘This has been a strange night,’ Ishmael said, unnecessarily.
‘It was the best,’ said Fat Les. ‘Best night I’ve had since I was a kid.’
‘But it does show that violence begets violence.’
‘Yeah, there’s no arguing with that.’
‘It turns men into beasts. It’s the death of rationality. And yet, and yet…’
‘Yeah, fun isn’t it?’
‘No, not fun, not fun at all; but tonight with the danger and the threat of mayhem, the smell of death and petrol in the air, well it certainly made me feel alive.’
There is no life without adventure,’ said Fat Les.
♦
Ben Pon manages at last to sell his grey Beetle at only a slight loss, and returns home. A little later Nordhoff makes his own trip to America, but lacking the confidence to take an actual car he contents himself with a sheaf of photographs. He does find somebody prepared to become Volkswagen’s official American importer. In 1950 there are a grand total of 157 Volkswagens registered in the United States.
♦
Fat Les and Ishmael headed for Brighton. Fat Les had been a mod in his earlier years and had a few memorable fights with rockers and police on Brighton beach. For him this was a Proustian journey.
‘We’d missed the war. We were too young for the army, so we had to make our own amusement. We had to fight among ourselves. We fought them on the beaches, in the transport caffs, in the car-parks. Happy days.’
‘I can imagine,’ Ishmael said, though he couldn’t.