The Cabrio is not a “Nazi car”. You are erroneously confusing the original Volkswagen (popularly known as the Beetle) with the Cabrio.
http://www.pre67vw.co.uk/history/default.asp
This is the SDMB, get your facts right before posting.
Nick Drake’s sister Gabrielle Drake and his collaborator Joe Boyd are quoted on his posthumous success in this article from Entertainment Weekly:
"Nick of Time"http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,276097~7~~,00.html
Volkswagon is the manufacturer of the Cabrio.
The Nazi-origins of Volkswagon are outlined in that link you provided.
Sorry, but I don’t see how my little joke flies the face of “facts”.
My joke wasn’t meant as an insult to Volkswagon owners. I assume you are one since the “Nazi” thing really served to needle you. Beside the Volkswagon, Nazi technolgical ingenuity contributed to the success of IBM, the autobahn, and rocket science, which doesn’t neccesarily mean these things are inherently bad. They just have rather interesting historical origins. As Walter Benjamin said, “Every piece of civilization is at the same time a piece of barbarism.”
No, I don’t own stock in Volksw-a-g-e-n.
Nazi technological ingenuity did not contribute to the success of IBM; it’s the other way around. Read the article:
Sorry if I offended you, Adam, but your use of ‘suffer’ and ‘had it hard’ made me scoff. It wasn’t the first time that I’ve heard that Drake’s music was ruined by the ad, an idea I find ridiculous. I’m open to your tale of woe, it could be that hearing ‘your’ Nick Drake in a car commercial did cause immense anguish to you and your fellow Drake-o-philes. But please excuse me if I’m a little skeptical at first.
I’ve read more than the article. I’ve read the book. Books tend to have a more nuanced grasp of facts than a two-page internet article. The point of Black’s book is not only that IBM gladly provided and profitted from the punch-card technology that processed the extermination of European Jewry. This is an historical fact readily known to all visitors to The Holocaust Museum. No, his point is that the Nazis, whose technological-fetishism enabled them to create the most powerful army in Europe pre-1941, worked in partnership with the New York offices of IBM and its German subsidiary Dehomag. The Nazis made improvemnts to IBM’s technology due to the increasing pace of extermination. These improvements were adopted and led to the technological revolutions that would later consolidate IBM’s global corporate power. Black makes the case that, though the Holocaust would still have happened without IBM, the Nazis could never have achieved the numbers they did without IBM technology. And the same thng could be said of IBM: they simply would not be the global power they now are without the Nazis.
That said, this stuff really belongs on another thread, as it has nothing to do with Volkswagen’s co-optation of a Nick Drake song.
And I tend to agree that if his sister wants to make a little money off her brother’s work, who are we to object?
P.S. Thanks for the correct spelling of Volkswagen. See? I can be nice…
Goodness me, what a hijack.
Anyway, I like Nick Drake. So there.