Obituaries - March 23, 2000
* Ivan Hirst; Revived Volkswagen After World War II
Ivan Hirst, 84, a British army engineer who reconstituted Germany’s Volkswagen to produce the Beetle after World War II. Hirst, then a major in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, was sent to Wolfsburg, Germany, in 1945 after British forces took control of the Volkswagen factory, built originally to create Adolf Hitler’s dream of a “people’s car.” The outbreak of war had blocked production before it began and Hitler converted the factory to build military vehicles. It was heavily bombed by the Allies during the war, and afterward Hirst was one of a group of officers sent there with little instruction. His assignment was to set up a workshop to repair British vehicles and to sell the production line and machine tools. No buyers emerged. A British report at the time concluded: “The vehicle does not meet the fundamental technical requirement of a motor car. . . . It is quite unattractive to the average buyer.” Nevertheless, two Beetles were produced, and Hirst sent one to the army for a test, noting: “It seemed a good little car. I thought it had a chance.” The British army was so impressed that it ordered 20,000 to be built as war reparations. By the end of 1945, the factory had turned out 1,785, and by the following October, production hit 10,000. Hirst left Wolfsburg in August 1949, a month before the company was formally handed over to a trust run by the West German government. He later worked in the British Foreign Office’s German section, then joined the secretariat of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, retiring in 1975. On March 10 in Marsden, England.
