Bug: The Strange Mutations Of The World's Most Famous Automobile

by Phil Patton

"Herbie." "Punchbuggy." "Beetle." The world's most recognizable automobile goes by many noms de plume. But did you know that the "Love Bug" was originally conceived as Hitler's "car of the people," or that it was the Manson "family"'s car of choice?Tapping into Americans' continuing obsession with the VW Bug, Phil Patton has written a kaleidoscopic history of the car from the 1950s to the 2000s. He describes the genius marketing strategy used in America to rid the car of its Fascist associations (VW hired a Jewish marketing team), and explains why designers are obsessed with its shape (the Bug, like the Pantheon, fits the Greek "golden ellipse" ideal of dimension). Patton posits that the Bug was the first car to cause Americans to "wrap themselves in a brand as an extension of their ideology," and turn up their noses at the huge, showy cars produced in Detroit. Amazingly, it worked, and, based on the Beetle's continuing status as an American cultural icon, it still does. As Jonathan Yardley asserted in the Washington Post Book Review : "The original Bug was more than a car, it was an experience."

Genres: History

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2002

About the author

Phil Patton is a contributing editor at Departures, Esquire, and I.D., a contributing writer at Wired and an automotive design writer for The New York Times. Phil was a regular contributor to The New York Times Home and Garden section and, in 1998, originated the "Public Eye" column. He has written many books including: Made in USA: The Secret Histories of the Things That Made America (Grove-Weidenfeld, 1992), which was named a New York Times notable book of the year; Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile (Simon & Schuster, 2002); Michael Graves Designs: The Art of the Everyday Object (Melcher, 2004); and Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51 (Villard, 1998). He has also written for Art in America, ARTnews, Connoisseur, Geo, Harper's Bazaar, Men's Journal, The New Republic, New York Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Travel + Leisure, Traveler, The Village Voice and Vogue. Phil was the Editorial Consultant on the Guggenheim Museum's "Motorcycle" show in 1998 and Consulting Curator for the "Different Roads" exhibition at MoMA in 1999. In 2000 he was consultant and contributor for "On the Job: Design and the American Office" at the National Building Museum in Washington.

Reviews

[Jacob Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many books on the bug are written like textbooks, filled with facts and figures, but cold and clinical.
This one reads more like a biography of a person. Which is fitting, as more often than not a beetle became a member of the family.

[Brokenshoelace · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a VW owner and semi-enthusiast, I found this book to be very informative and entertaining to read. Appealing to the historian-cum-car geek in all of us.

[Bill]

A really fun book that documents this cultural icon from Hitler's pet project to that zeitgeist shape of the late 1990s: the Bondi Blue iMac, its erstwhile partner in design.

[Rae · Rating 5 out of 5]

No revelation or important information. Just another book