Volkswagen of America: A Story of Success

Throughout the 1960s and to a lesser extent, during the 1970s, Volkswagen dominated the import automobile market in the United States and became especially popular with the baby boomer generation and within the counterculture community during the Vietnam War.

This work investigates the history of Volkswagen in America and its relationship with counterculture, advertising, and economics. The evidence for this work consists of archival documents from Volkswagen s corporate archives, annual reports, contemporary newspaper and magazine advertisements, contemporary news articles, and a range of secondary literature on Volkswagen, economics, European history, and American history.

Analysis of the primary sources (archival documents, annual reports, and advertisements), along with secondary literature, revealed that the reason behind Volkswagen s successes in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s was mainly due to the innovative advertising their advertising agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, used to advertise their automobiles, and to a lesser extent, the counterculture movement of the 1960s were attracted to the Volkswagens because of the contrasting difference between traditional, large, flamboyant American cars and the small, understated Volkswagens and the fact that they were cheap to buy and maintain.