West Germany: Rethinking Small

In West Germany's deepening business downturn, few areas of the economy have suffered more than the auto industry. Production, which increased 12% in 1965, rose a bare 3% last year (to 3,000,000), and automakers entered 1967 with a worrisome 360,000 unsold cars. So severe is the slump that mighty Volkswagen, fourth largest automaker in the world (after the U.S. Big Three), is learning to think small again. Off Volkswagen's assembly lines at Wolfsburg last week rolled the first of its new Model 1200 sedans, which VW executives call the Wirtschaftskrise Käfer—the "economic...