Volkswagen Factory trivia, incidents, accidents, gossips, tales

[novetti]

Volkwagen Brazil - Anchieta Plant 1970 FIRE

Transferring this from another VWB free bashing...

Another trivia from VWB operations and some education for the rocket scientists who like to bash and crap on anything VWB did was less inferior or poorer than the sourkrautz laden aroma from Wolfsburg...

German VW's paint from 68' to until 72' was complete and utter SHIT compared to BR VW through that period and here is why.

The Brazillian Plant had a serious fire at the recently inaugurated paint shop in 1970 (took them 5 years to complete the installation) which completely wrecked the facility with people killed included (90,000m2 of shopfloor lost, 41 million USD equiv today).
However the VW Wolfsburg Plant had procured from DURR a complete new modern paint line to replace the old German facility (which was out of compliance, expensive to run and outdated) 2 years earlier ans was at advanced fabrication stage.

Due to the fact they lost the brand new facility in Brazil and putting that back online would take over a year or more to procure another system (simply put the whole production would stop), Kurt Lotz (global VW president) and others decided to ship to Brazil the DURR package already been fabricated originally intended for the German plant, so they could put the BR plant back online asap. So they did. Until that became operational they actually counted on assistance from Karmann, Ford, Willys, Mercedes Benz who also had manufacturing lines nearby the Anchieta plant. These plants actually sprayed VW cars for a a few months until they could re-erect the facilities in house.

What happen then Brazil had a state of the art E-coat pre treatment and the whole line years earlier than Germany manufacturing did. Specially when the T2 changed to bays in 68', VW Wolfsburg was having serious issues in the surface protection and coatings, re tooling, prep, different welding and assembly methods from the split (hence the decision to modernize the line).

About Nordhoff, he was a character on its on, the T2 only lasted that long because he was the real hipster (not a guitar hero), and he firmly believe the simplicity of the design would last forever. Only after he got pushed away from the control of VW that things started to change (from aircooling to Watercooling), more car models, more frequent re styling etc.
He was pivotal in the implementation of VWB, he used to travel frequently to Brasil during the period of construction and early operations of the Anchieta plant.

I put some photos from the fire in my album here at the samba for the trolls to see and a link to a few details about this story (in portuguese)
http://zonaderisco.blogspot.com.au/2008/08/memria-mega-incndio-na-volkswagen.html

The Anchieta plant was no mickey mouse operations comparing to other foreign ventures from VW, the effort in Brasil was establishing facilities in size, capacity and investment au pair Wolfsburg had at the same time.



Any stories you guys might know of from other facilities/installations?

[TDCTDI]

So..., who was bashing VW Brazil? & why are you defending their honor 45+ years after the fact?
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Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[novetti]

[skills@eurocarsplus]

[TDCTDI]

Ahh, thanks skills. Novetti, while your post is informative, the original forum doesn't appear to be locked & it's completely out of context here (maybe it got moved). You might want to try posting your reply there.
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[coad]

[TDCTDI]

I just read the original topic & saw where it was suggested that you post the info here, perhaps you could edit your post to lose the bitchiness.
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[novetti]

Nah... I want now someone with knowledge in the Puebla plant (mexico) to bring some stories!!

I heard a rumour (when I was there in MX) that an illegal bordello operated there hidden from the bosses (inside factory gates) for a period of time for some workers who might felt a oil change between a taco break?

Anyway there is a whole untapped encyclopaedia of stories behind the manufacturing operations that would be cool to hear.

A have a few more to share but I will stay quiet for the moment.

[coad]

The only Puebla story I ever heard (again, from my father in law) was that he went to try to sell them an inventory management system that would make sure the red interior showed up on the line just as the red beetle shell was ready for it.

The VW guys were very polite and friendly, but at the end the plant manager took him aside and said, "look, we make XXX hundred beetles per day, and there's a 6 month wait list for every one of them. If we make red beetles, we sell red beetles. If we build yellow beetles we sell yellow beetles. Your system sounds great, but come back in 10 years, we might need it by then."

[Slow 1200]

Nordhoff died in 68, just saying...

[Zundfolge1432]

X2 nordoff dead in 1968 which was also their best year of sales worldwide over 420,000 units. From there numbers go down every year why? Japanese competition,weak yen making those cars cheaper and jap cars more modern with standard features unavailable on WW2 design VW. Also rising German mark against a shrinking US dollar made the VW more expensive. In my opinion VW died in 68 with nordoff.

[Jon Schmid]

[novetti]

[Merlin]

Thanks for sharing, novetti.

It made for a fascinating read and has definitely educated me somewhat.
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