‘We rode scooters, wore suits, took pills. What did you do in your youth, Ishmael?’
‘I did my O-levels, went out with Debby, went to see groups at the City Hall. I never had a youth, really.’
‘Poor sod. Is that what you’re trying to do now? Trying to recapture a youth you never had?’
‘No,’ Ishmael said. ‘Youth’s all about having fun. I’m not just having a good time now. I’m looking for spiritual advancement.’
‘Isn’t fun a form of spiritual advancement?’
Ishmael had to think about that.
♦
The Volkswagen’s conquest of America will require a very slick and thorough marketing campaign. In 1959 the advertising agency of Doyle Dane Bernbach takes on the Volkswagen account in the United States.
Despite being the third name in the company title, Bill Bernbach is the genius in the side.
An English graduate from New York University, he is at heart a copywriter, but a copywriter with an unfailing instinct for integrating words and pictures.
He gets to work at nine, goes home at five. He is a brilliant maverick who loves his family.
He carries with him a card that he looks at from time to time, especially when facing some client with whom he particularly disagrees.
The card reads, ‘Maybe he’s right.’
♦
They were parked on the high sea-front at Brighton. There was a wide road, a pavement, a wall, then a sudden drop down to another road at beach level. They looked out to sea. They were drinking Colt 45. If it isn’t cold, it isn’t Colt. It was cold. Ishmael was shattered, freezing and nauseous, and a long way from home, yet for all that he felt at one with it all.
‘To be at one with it all is to be very fucked up,’ said Fat Les.
‘Do you feel at one with it all, Les?’
‘Sure.’
It was three in the morning but the town was not quiet. There were still drunks and loving couples wandering the streets, cars still drove past.
‘We couldn’t have been followed, could we?’ Ishmael said. ‘For one thing they’d have caught us by now.’
‘You worry too much,’ said Fat Les.
Then a four-wheel-drive Japanese jeep flashed past. At first it meant nothing to Ishmael, then it stirred a memory. Was it the one that had been parked outside ‘Sorrento’? It looked similar, the colour might have been the same, but the same could have been said for plenty of other cars. Ishmael was getting paranoid.
But then perhaps he had reason to be paranoid. The jeep had driven past at some speed, then turned a corner and gone out of sight. Fat Les and Ishmael continued drinking their beers and looking out to sea. The jeep came by again, slower this time as though the driver was looking them over, though not slow enough for Ishmael to see who was driving. It drove past and turned the corner again.
‘Probably a couple of Brighton wide-boys who feel like picking on drunks,’ Fat Les said. ‘Are you ready for trouble?’
‘I could live without it,’ Ishmael replied.
‘Yeah, but you could live better with it.’
♦
Bill Bernbach knows it isn’t going to be easy to sell the Volkswagen in America.
Voluptuous metal, silvered trim, enough room to have an orgy on the back seat — this is what the public thinks it wants. Bill Bernbach is about to change all that. The public never know what they want until somebody tells them.
Bernbach tells them that this car is eccentric, ornery, a lemon. ‘It’s ugly but it gets you there.’ He makes owning a Volkswagen an act of protest against the excesses of Detroit, against vulgarity, greed and conspicuous consumption.
He tells them that Volkswagen is the car of the nonconformist. And in America there are millions of non-conformists, all waiting for a product they can buy that will confirm their individuality. Millions.
♦
The jeep came round again. It approached along the straight sea-front road, and then it stopped, perhaps fifty yards away. The headlights were turned off. Ishmael still hoped he was mistaken. He hoped it was neither wide-boys, nor Marilyn’s father. Couldn’t it just be a couple out for a late night look at the sea? He couldn’t see the faces of the people in the jeep, but it did look like a man and a woman. Was it Marilyn’s mother and father, the old team back together, united by a shared desire to hit him some more?
The driver’s and passenger’s doors opened simultaneously. Ishmael was ready. Fat Les was eager. A man and woman stepped from the jeep; on the passenger’s side Davey, on the driver’s side Marilyn.
‘Stone the bleedin’ crows,’ said Fat Les.
Ishmael had to agree.
‘Nice diversion,’ said Davey.
‘What?’
‘The Molotov cocktails — a really good tactic. With all that mayhem going on I could crash about inside the house, make all the noise I wanted, and Marilyn’s old man wasn’t going to notice. I had to break down the door to get Marilyn out of her bedroom, but apart from that it was easy.’
‘We stole the jeep — though it wasn’t really stealing, Marilyn knew where the keys were. The only trouble we had was keeping up with you two. But once we saw that you were heading for Brighton that was easy too. We knew we’d find you.’
‘It’s so good to have you here,’ Ishmael said to Marilyn.
‘Looks like it was meant to be,’ Marilyn replied.
‘Are you sure you weren’t followed?’ Fat Les asked.
‘You seem to have done a reasonable job of immobilizing half the motor transport in Crockenfield,’ Marilyn said.
Davey said, ‘And her Dad’s not going anywhere in his Roller until he’s got the sugar out of his petrol tank.’
They celebrated with a few more cans of Colt 45. Taking everything into account it had been a successful quest. It hadn’t gone exactly according to plan, but Ishmael had, by however indirect a method, achieved everything he had set out to.
‘And what do we do now?’ Davey asked.
At first he appeared to be putting the question in general, to everyone, but then Ishmael realized he was only addressing him.
‘I don’t know,’ Ishmael said. ‘What should we do now, Les?’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Fat Les said. ‘How should I know?
You tell us. After all, you’re our leader.’
♦
Bernbach decides that the Volkswagen shall be an East Coast car, a snob car, a holier than thou car. The man who owns a Volkswagen is above all this bullshit whereby you measure a man’s cock by the size of his car, the size of his ego and his salary.
A year is supposed to be a long time in American automobile production, too long a time for a manufacturer to go without making a few styling changes, each year demanding a new model. Bill Bernbach is going to change that.
A full-page newspaper ad shows a man and his Volkswagen. The man is lean and young and he is not smiling. He doesn’t look like a professional model. He isn’t supposed to. His name is Michael Kennedy. He looks like he could be a college professor, an aeronautics engineer, even one of a new breed of hard-edged stand-up comedians. The suit is tight. The tie is thin. He’s even wearing glasses.
The caption tells us that the Volkswagen he’s leaning against is made up from a 1947 body, a ‘55 chassis, engine and doors, ‘56 seats, ‘58 bumpers, ‘61 tail lights, a ‘62 fender, a ‘63 front end, and a ‘65 transmission.
Yes, the Volkswagen is the same, year in year out. Something constant in a world of planned obsolescence.
The campaign tells us that high volume can be consistent with high quality, that cultural enhancement need not be elitist; though Hitler, of course, got there first with both these thoughts.
The Volkswagen is the hero of the advertising campaign.
♦
A leader? Ishmael? He who had never done more than supervise one part-time member of staff at the library. He didn’t want to be in charge of anyone’s life but his own.