Obviously I love cars. Growing up in the wrecking yard, the one car that always stood out as just plain weird was the Volkswagen Beetle. They were odd looking, air cooled, with the trunk in the front. But wow, were they ever built well. They’d go and go and go. Anybody my age either owned one or had somebody close to them own one.

One of the first cars I owned was a dune buggy built on a Volkswagen Beetle frame. I wasn’t old enough to drive on the roads yet, so I would zip around in it at our family ranch. It was a blast and I had a lot of fun tinkering with the rear engine design. Curiously, I still own that car and it sits in storage at the ranch.

So when I heard good reviews about Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle by Andrea Hiott, I knew it was one of those books that I had to read. Hiott traces the history of the Bug from it’s original conceptualization by Ferdinand Porsche and it’s backing by Adolph Hitler, all the way through to modern times as Volkswagen attempts to be the largest car company in the world. It’s a fascinating story written in a crisp clean style. I’m sure car lovers will enjoy it, but not so sure others will find it as fascinating as I did. After all, it is about the history of an iconic car…and not much else.

Well, wait…there are some fascinating insights into how the Bug influenced and was influenced by modern culture. There are great insights into the advertising world as Hiott leads us through how the Volkswagen was presented by the Madison Avenue crowd, and how those advertisements shaped marketing today. There are also some keen insights into the Nazi war machine and Hitler’s bizarre behavior. And of course there are sections that might as well be a biography of Ferdinand Porsche. So this is more than a car book.

Definitely worth reading if this interests you. Otherwise, I’m not so sure….but it’s still fascinating.