Post by VWCA_Adman on Jan 22, 2022 23:13:13 GMT -6
By Fred Ortlip
The average cost of a new house was nearly $11,000 — just $87 a month for renters. Gasoline was 23 cents a gallon, and seven out of 10 families now owned a car. The average wage was about $80 a week. The first McDonald’s restaurant opened and so did Disneyland. Rosa Parks, an African-American bus passenger, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala.
In New York City and the New Jersey suburbs, a quirky German subcompact sold in America for only seven years was inspiring a group of enthusiasts to form a club aimed at connecting other enthusiasts from around the country.
The year, 1955. The car, Volkswagen. The publication they used to spread the word: The VW Autoist.
More than six decades later, the publication that pledged to help members enjoy their VW (and later Audi) to the fullest has reached its 500th edition.
As originally named, the VW Auto Club of U.S. produced its first Autoist issue in February 1955, a single, shiny 9 x 12-inch sheet folded sideways, in effect a neat four-page issue. The editor was also the club’s founder, Sterling Parks Jr., a lawyer who worked for a real estate title insurance company. The Autoist described its mission as “An independent national membership society interested in the air-cooled Volkswagen, product of Western Germany.” It listed a post office box in the Bronx’s Fordham Station.
With the growing German automaker originally setting up its U.S. headquarters in New York City (later moving to Englewood Cliffs, N.J., just across the Hudson River), club organizers recognized a conduit to other VW owners.
As the Autoist would later report: “On a chilly February evening in 1955, seven Volkswagen owners and enthusiasts gathered around a table. Out of that modest beginning came one of the biggest and fastest-growing clubs in the world—the Volkswagen Club of America.
“The seven men came from all walks of life; they included a stone-mason, a lawyer, an engineer, a college student, a magazine writer, an automobile mechanic and an airport dispatcher. But they had one thing in common: a desire to form a club of VW owners which would make it possible for them to exchange information and tips, and share their enthusiasm for the world’s greatest automobile.”
Autoist No. 1 reported: “We promised a certain dealer that we would form a club, and he promised to promote recruiting. Other dealers have since promised to promote recruiting. We outlined our plan for the club to the principal representative in the U.S. of Volkswagenwerk at their U.S. offices, 720 Fifth Ave., New York. We also discussed the proposed VW Auto Club of U.S. with Victor Elmaleh of World Wide Automobiles Corp., VW distributors (importers) for New York and certain other states, at their offices.”
Bicycle shops sold early VWs
In 1954, Elmaleh, a Moroccan-born U.S. citizen and real estate developer, was among the first to import Volkswagens, a tough sell because the cars were an outlier among America’s automotive behemoths and produced in a country America was at war with just a decade earlier. The New York Times reported in Elmaleh’s obituary in 2014 that he enlisted bicycle shops and used-car lots to sell the cars, to make up for the reluctance of established dealers.
In that first Autoist, Elmaleh praised the club’s goal of remaining independent of distributors and dealers, adding, “I foresee that such a club would be invaluable to owners of the Volkswagen by helping them to obtain all the pleasure, usefulness and economy from their cars that the manufacturer wants them to have.”
He added that he would “urge our dealers to consider promoting membership to the VW Auto Club of U.S. in every way they can.”
And so it went. Only dealers and their executives were excluded from joining. “However, bundle-lot subscriptions to The VW Autoist (10 copies of each issue) are welcomed from VW dealers and distributors at $10 a year.”
With plenty of organizing for the club to do, Autoist No. 2 was five months in waiting under new editor Alvin Outcalt. Seven members made up the Board of Directors, including Parks, now one of the assistant treasurers. Further details of Parks’ role in organizing the club were never revealed in the Autoist. Issue No. 3, published in October 1955, grew to eight pages, but Parks’ name was gone from the directors lineup without explanation.
Issue No. 4, in January 1956, began to publish names and addresses of members, starting with the first 30. Though half that number resided in either New York or New Jersey, member No. 1 was Arthur Albright of Milwaukee. For reasons unknown, the club’s founder, Parks, was No. 13.
Gearing up as a monthly, No. 6 grew to 12 pages and No. 7, the first convention issue, was now 81⁄2 x 11 inches in size. It would remain in that format for the next 13 years.
A name change
No. 8 announced that the organization’s name had been changed to Volkswagen Club of America from VW Auto Club of U.S. The Autoist reported: “VW may be as familiar to you as Chevvy [sic] and Olds to owners of those cars, but relatively few non-automotive enthusiasts know that VW stands for Volkswagen. We wanted a name that specifically identified the car.” In addition, Canadian members were said to be uneasy about the “U.S.” part of the title. At least “America” was a connection to their part of “North America.”
Outcalt, who lived in Nutley, N.J., stepped down as editor after the July 1957 issue but served as associate editor until late 1962 as well as president and board chairman in his time with the club.
New editor Don Ellenberger, from Newton, N.J., was an editor of European Car Guide and contributed to other national magazines. He wrote in his intro in issue No. 23: “In order to make the Autoist grow and to make it look more like a magazine, we are going to need a picture for the first page, or cover; this picture is going to have to be fairly large, clear and, above all, of interest to all club members. Pictures anyone? In short, it’s your Autoist and your help is needed.” Results were mixed. He continued with the Autoist until January 1960.
In the May 1958 issue, the Autoist was seeking a book and movie editor “whose duty will be to write a column on books, magazines and movies of interest to VW enthusiasts.”
By September 1958, the Autoist had an editor, managing editor, associate editor, rallye editor, technical editor, cartoon editor, safety editor, tips editor, regional club news editor, business manager and ad manager, all helping to produce monthly 12- to 16-page issues.
Ellenberger announced his retirement as editor at the 1959 convention. “I have found that I could not do justice to the Autoist and still see my wife and 11⁄2-year-old son occasionally, and work around the house as is often required of a new homeowner.” Frank Coggins, the letters editor from Newark, N.J., who was a freelance writer and photographer, took over the top spot, writing a column “Blue Pencil Notes.”
A production godsend
In October 1959, John Eberle of Delanco, N.J., who was one year into his job as business manager, wrote an explanation for why the Autoist was consistently late, up to two months behind schedule. “The work that is involved in putting out a single issue is just a little bit short of being impossible due to the fact that all on the staff of the Autoist are doing this work in their spare time.”
Copy and ads sent to editors were then forwarded to Eberle, who took them to a typesetter. Galley proofs were sent back to Coggins for review. A dummy was assembled by cutting apart the proofs and photos and pasting them in position page by page. Eberle then would set up each page with type and print a reproduction proof. These were taken to a platemaker, who photographed the reproduction proofs, inserted the ads and pictures and made the plates for the actual printing. The plates were then taken to the printer, who printed and bound the entire issue.
Eventually, Eberle — himself a printer — was doing much of this work himself in his basement shop, helping transition the Autoist from old-school letterpress printing to the new, more efficient, offset style.
The 16-page regular issue of April 1961 included a 12-page recruiting brochure. It touted to potential members a “handsome club badge, manufactured in Germany, to display on your VW” and a lot more, including tours to Germany.
The September 1961 issue listed roughly 1,800 VWCA members, their addresses and membership numbers, a mind-boggling feat given the time involved inputting all that data, presumably by the aggregator and then the typesetter. A proofreader’s bonanza.
After a little over three years, Coggins left the Autoist because of “business demands” as editor of Foreign Car Guide. Soon-to-be outgoing club President George McAleer, who was also an associate editor and columnist from the Chicago suburb of Bensenville, Ill., took over the editor’s job effective with the July 1962 issue. In fall 1962, Coggins traveled to Peoria, Ill., site of the club’s fourth Oktoberfest, to address members. He covered the event for his magazine.
In September 1962, new President Carl Ziemann told the convention that he was on record as favoring far more technical coverage of the VW. The club budgeted a total of $50 per issue to pay for contributions and noted that on rare occasions one big story might garner the entire amount. McAleer, a prolific writer of tips, travel columns and other features in his tenure with the Autoist, would revive Coggins’ “Blue Pencil Notes” column.
By mid-1962, large-format issues were consistently 20 to 24 pages.
’The Joy of Being an Editor'
In February 1963, the Autoist commemorated its eighth anniversary issue by reporting: “It is hoped that future issues of the Autoist will bring to the members excerpts of these early issues in hopes of helping the recent members capture the excitement and pioneering spirit of the founders of VWCA and early VW owners.”
In the July 1964 issue, McAleer was obviously at the end of his run when he wrote a blurb entitled “The Joy of Being an Editor.”
“Getting out this newsletter is no picnic!!!,” he exclaimed. “Volkswagen Club members are a diversified group — you can’t please them all. If we print jokes, members say we are silly. If we don’t, they say we have no sense of humor and are too serious. If we don’t print your contributions, we don’t appreciate genius; and if we do print them, other say the newsletter is filled with junk. If we clip things from other papers, we are too lazy to write them ourselves. If we don’t we are stuck with our own stuff. Now, like as not, some reader will say we swiped this from another newsletter. We did!”
Cryptically, the September 1964 issue advised readers to “send future material to Frances Cox,” a member in Springfield, Ohio. At the ninth convention in Atlanta, she was announced as the sixth editor, effective with the November 1964 issue. She wrote: “They say a new broom sweeps clean. Well, we don’t know just how this axiom would apply to the Autoist, as our predecessor, George McAleer, kept a pretty tidy house! However, we do represent a new trend of thought in the club, and it follows, some new ideas will evolve on various matters.”
The Autoist’s first female editor continued the “Blue Pencil Notes” column. In December 1964, she wrote, “Well, I think I am learning. There’s nothing to make you learn like having the man say, ‘Well, it’s all yours!’ This is when you either sink or swim. I think I’ll swim, as long as I continue receiving the cooperation of our regular contributors.” Conveniently, she owned and operated a printing shop in Springfield.
Nearly four years later, in August 1968, a Wisconsin mailing address mysteriously appeared under Cox’s name on Page 2, replacing her Ohio address. The September issue revealed the news: Barb Scholl, from the Badger Beetles VW Club of Milwaukee, was replacing Cox. A story on the change said Cox had to resign for personal reasons and that changes were coming to the Autoist. The personal reasons might have been related to the health of her husband, Roger Cox, who died two years later of cancer.
The October 1968 issue, highlighting the convention in Chicago, offered a more airy layout with bigger, multiple-column headlines and bigger body type, replacing the decade-plus-long style of one-column heads and gray columns lacking photos.
Format changes
The June 1969 issue delivered a major change, as President Harry Raymond announced that the Autoist would be converted to a monthly newsletter with information about the executive meetings, trustee meetings, local club events and national events, “which we would keep current and timely.”
He added: “We have felt for quite some time that the Autoist was not fulfilling the needs of the members, so now when a member joins or renews his membership, he will receive World Car Guide, a magazine devoted to the VW owner and filled with ideas and tips to help the VW owner. Therefore, we felt the Autoist in its present form was not needed.”
Subscription glitches ensued, and members in some cases waited months to get their first issue of World Car Guide.
The July 1969 issue had to be a shock to members, shrunken from the traditional 812 x11 format to the size of today’s Autoist, just 20 pages in length and stripped of its traditional magazine veneer. Cam and Vera Morrison were listed as the new co-editors, and Eberle, a major figure in the Autoist’s production since early on, was dropped from the list of staffers.
In a small-world twist, the Morrisons lived in a suburb of St. Louis, less than four miles from both the current editor and his immediate predecessor.
In a cost-cutting move, the Autoist was now typeset with an IBM Selectric typewriter, advanced at the time because users could select different font types (the tall Letter Gothic predominated). As intended, it looked more like a newsletter than the magazine it once was.
The September 1969 Milwaukee convention issue ran photos of Eberle and Scholl being recognized for their work and noted Raymond’s praise and thanks for their service.
In February and March 1970, Vera Morrison wrote of her extensive travels to Europe, lamenting what was lacking in the guide books was attitude. “Going to Europe with the wrong attitude means you’re dead, wiped out, shot down and besides that, you’ll spend a lot of money without having a good time,” she wrote.
In the August 1970 convention minutes, the editors reported, “Generally the new format has been favorably accepted by the membership and the editors have had excellent response from this body in the way of materials.”
Some daunting numbers
Seven months later, the Morrisons announced they were quitting. “This is truly not a difficult job,” they wrote, “but we don’t want to underestimate the time it takes to put such a magazine together.” They did it all — editing, typesetting, layout and mailing. Just pasting the address labels alone was a time-consuming task. Sharlene Burlew of St. Louis debuted as a regular contributor of hand-drawn cover art.
In May 1971, Chris and Mary Colombo of Greenbelt, Md., were accepted as new co-editors.
In the Morrisons’ final issue, June 1971, they wrote: “For those of you interested in statistics, in the last two years we have published 458 pages of text, approximating more than a half million words … all of which had to be edited, typed and proofread.”
The Colombos, a couple with two small children, wrote in July 1971: “Mary held various writing jobs after she graduated from college. Now that she wasn’t working, she missed doing editorial work. Chris has the tenuous position of electronic engineer. So you can see that the former should know what a sentence is, and the latter believes that any group of 70 to 100 words with a period at the end, a few commas sprinkled throughout and a capital letter at the beginning is a valid sentence.”
In October 1972, in response to a request to write a job description for future editors, the Colombos reported on the grind of producing a monthly publication: “The only real starting point is the day a future editor volunteers, and the next distinguishable point is when the old editor ships off the Autoist typewriter to the new editor. Between these two points is a continuous grind consisting of slow or steady work and all out panics. Since there is no starting point during a typical month, we might as well jump in the middle and thrash around for 30 days.”
By the following January, two years into their run, they announced their retirement.
In July 1973, Steve and Jo Seifert of Youngstown, Ohio, took over as editors, and much of the body type changed to a more professional look — think Times New Roman — though that might have been just a new font attachment to the IBM Selectric.
In 1974, they reported: “We have increased the number of pages, photos, contributors and have added regular monthly features. The use of photos has also been increased. We have moved the publication date up a full week without changing the deadline date.” They reported putting in a minimum of 120 hours of production time.
In June 1975, the Seiferts gave up after a two-year stint.
With the September 1975 issue, Burlew provided the cover artwork once again as Autoist production returned to St. Louis, where it’s remained to this day. On the Page 2 staff box, the new editor was listed as “Ed,” but it was actually the workaholic club president, Walter Kuntze. In his nearly 20 years with the club at that point, he worked relentlessly … and for the next year and a half, he’d work just as hard to find a new editor.
In the meantime, the pre-Seiferts typewriter-produced look of the Autoist returned, and sons Gerry and Mark Kuntze were enlisted as production assistants.
The January 1976 Autoist reported that the computer company handling club business had gone bankrupt. Attempts were being made to get the club’s tapes and other property back. As a result, the inability to print address labels would delay a future issue, but it was unclear of the duration.
A monthly no longer
Halfway through 1976, the Autoist quietly became a bimonthly with issue No. 246 for July/August. In the president’s report, Kuntze announced in the Jan/Feb 1977 issue that longtime member Betty Brown would take over as new editor. “Publishing every other month has been a help to our treasury and to the temporary editor’s time, but does it help our club survive?” he asked.
In her first issue, No. 250 (March/April 1977) Brown wrote: “Aside from having been a secretary for 30 years, my only experience in ‘editing’ per se was a stint of several years as editor of a local VWCA newsletter. However, as a recent and enthusiast ‘retiree’ from the wild business world, I agreed to take on this Autoist, to prove there’s life in the old girl yet.” Meanwhile, the Kuntze branch agreed to continue with the post-production side of address labels, bundling and mailing.
Kuntze made a point of handwriting headlines and asides to readers, often with heavy jagged underlines for emphasis.
A years-long run of full-page magazine-style VW ads ended in late 1977 with a note from Kuntze on Page 2 that was otherwise left blank. “This prime space available. It had been reserved for the VW ad but despite a contract through April ’78 we have received no ad copy, have been told not to run past ads again and have not been paid for 6 out of the last 7 ads in the Autoist. — WK.”
At this point, Volkswagen was facing growing competition from Asian automakers while in the early stages of transitioning away from its air-cooled product. Now hardly a thriving presence in the U.S., it had gone from awarding Buses as grand prizes at the club’s annual conventions to not even spending token money on a newsletter ad.
Richard Van Treuren made his debut in the Nov/Dec 1977 issue, taking over the new column penned by Kuntze and aimed at owners of VW’s new front-drive models, the Rabbit (Golf), Dasher (Passat) and Scirocco. Issue No. 500 marks his 42nd anniversary as a contributor, and he’s seldom missed a beat over more than 250 issues.
In Jan/Feb 1978, a new revenue-generator called Friends of Our Club graced the centerfold, with more than 100 dealers paying to have their names published, including offers of discounts for parts and service.
The May/June 1978 issue, which covered the grand opening of the Volkswagen’s new Rabbit plant in Pennsylvania, totaled a record 50 pages.
The Sept/Oct 1979 issue provided a welcome to members of another VW group, the FrontDriver Club, which had produced two dozen issues for fans of the new VWs but was struggling to survive. That Autoist showed up in my mailbox just a couple of months after I’d taken a new job as a copy editor with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. All FrontDriver Club members had been merged into the VWCA and were promised that club content would continue within the Autoist itself.
That would last all of three issues, but no matter. I was more intrigued by the fact that the new Autoist editor’s ZIP code was the same as mine. As someone who while growing up liked to write and also assemble crude yearbook-style memorials to whatever sports activity I was involved in, this rag-tag Autoist had some serious promise. In a matter of a few months, the publication would undergo a transformation. VWCA
Part 2: New era
Technological advances and a dedicated staff help keep the Autoist running smoothly
Maude “Betty” Brown was a retired executive secretary from Monsanto Co. in St. Louis and a life-long VW enthusiast who never shied away from a good time. She held a national office, was active in the local VWCA affiliate, contributed content to the Autoist over several years and owned a beloved beige 1965 Beetle. But now in her 60s, her idea of a good time in the late 1970s wasn’t to slave over a car-club magazine every eight weeks as its editor.
But club President Walter Kuntze could be persistent and persuasive, and after he and family members had done the job on an interim basis for nearly a year and a half while begging for a volunteer to take over, she could resist no longer.
So when I noticed in the July/Aug 1979 Autoist welcoming FrontDriver Club members like myself to the VWCA, I was surprised to learn that Betty lived less than a half-mile from me. I decided to get in touch to see how I might contribute. Of course, she was thrilled that a journalist had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and I helped her finish off the Jan/Feb 1980 issue. My hands were all over the March/April issue, cleaning up the layout, making sure type was straight and eliminating handwritten headlines and column logos by using transferable press type lettering sheets.
I edited the copy, Betty touch-typed the galleys with the clacking IBM Selectric typewriter and on Page 2, I anointed myself as co-editor. Seemed appropriate: The Autoist looked dramatically better and brought praise from readers. With issue No. 268 proudly in hand, I later learned in a sitdown (or better yet showdown) with Walter in Betty’s kitchen about Rule No. 1 with the VWCA president: You did nothing club-related without his approval. His stern lecture was over-the-top ironic given his inability to find anyone to handle the Autoist for nearly 18 months. It wasn’t Walter’s style to offer praise or approval, but he did proffer a 25th anniversary VWCA-logo beer mug, at least. In our second issue I was still listed as co-editor, so he obviously realized I wasn’t too dangerous.
By our third issue, July/Aug 1980, I now carried the editor title, with Betty as assistant editor “by mutual agreement” of Betty, Walter and, of course, myself. But most importantly Walter. This was essentially the workflow for the next decade-plus. Contributors would mail their copy, I would edit it and drop it off to Betty for typing. Then came proofreading by me and corrections by her. I trimmed the white space off the galleys and used a newspaper-style hot waxer to paste the columns onto layout sheets — 18 double-truck grids of ruled white cardboard to produce 36 pages in the issue size used since August 1969.
It’s hard to imagine how the yesteryear editors were able to produce monthly issues as they did and easy to see how the work quickly consumed them. But looking back, I can’t believe I was able to maintain this bimonthly schedule for 11 years, bent over a card table for hours at a time to produce nearly 70 issues.
In 1984, at age 53, Hans Walter Kuntze died of complications of diabetes, a major setback to the club at large but also a lost connection to the Autoist’s post-production side — getting the pages to the printer, pasting labels, bundling and mailing. Then-and-current President Shell Tomlin found a Chicago area printer and created a custom aluminum box in which to ship the page grids back and forth. The lid was made to slide on and off and with our respective addresses on each side, reshipping was made more convenient. But clunky it was and not cheap to ship either.
Though Betty shared much of the work, it still took 20-30 hours on my end to get an issue completed. Younger people recognize the words “cut and paste” as representing simple computer key strokes. Back then, a surgically sharp Ex-Acto knife and straight edge performed the cutting while a hot-wax roller provided the “paste,” and often times the do-overs (the convenient CTRL-Z or CMD-Z on your keyboard) consisted of taping up the cuts and starting over. There’s some progress for you.
For several years, longtime Chicago affiliate members Greg Boltz and his late wife, Barbara, joined occasionally by grandkids, hand-attached the mailing labels, another tedious and time-consuming task.
As the ’80s were pushing into the ’90s, and with a wife and two young sons competing for my time, the work became dreary. But at the 35th annual convention in 1990 outside Chicago, Tomlin opened the door to the future.
“Would a desktop publishing system be more efficient in putting out the Autoist?” he asked, matter-of-factly. As I wrote in the first digital issue — No. 334, March/April 1991 — “Would any of us like to have their first Beetle back?”
With advice from the club’s printer in Aurora, Ill., the club bought a brand new Macintosh Classic computer, desktop publishing software and a printer. Built nothing like contemporary computers, this early Mac was a ridiculous looking foot-high cube — with a grayscale display slightly smaller than a standard iPad. We got the largest hard drive available (4 megabytes — about the equivalent of one digital song file) and with it the ability to run just one program at a time. Very slowly, of course, but magically.
Given the apparent dearth of volunteers willing to take on this daunting job of editor, the digital transition was probably a key to the club’s longevity. It certainly was a turning point for me. I’d already spent a decade in my newspaper job using a mainframe-driven computer, and I was seeing how our artists in the graphics department were transitioning to Macs, a generational change in the publishing business. But the learning curve was steep — more than two months after starting from scratch with the new Mac and figuring out new software to create a publication, a transformational Autoist was done. (Of course, World Wide Web, search engine and YouTube tutorial were nowhere close to earning a place in the digital lexicon.) But I was at least on a path to learning new creative skills used in other pursuits to this day.
Though I’ve persisted way longer than ever imagined, producing this kind of publication by devoted enthusiasts is so much easier when you’re surrounded by talented and reliable contributors who have made the magazine what it is today. The VWCA has always been like any other club ever formed — typically not a whole lot of people do a bulk of the work for the masses. Editors from the early days onward pleaded for stories and particularly photos from members (the early issues were mostly words and few pictures). Editors wrote of their frustrations in getting copy on time, in getting the issue out on a consistent basis. In a burnout job, the average tenure from 1955 to 1980 was a little more than two years.
For me, I’m lucky to work with people who seem more like dedicated employees than volunteers: Rich Van Treuren (who arrived in 1977); Lois Grace and Tom Janiszewski (1988); Steve Mierz (1991); and Cliff Leppke (1993), who took over for me as Page 3 columnist after my decade run in that slot. Don Capestrain had a productive 10-year stint writing about the hot New Beetle. Pete Frost, a tuned-in enthusiast from Britain, produced more copy than I ever could make room for starting in 2001. Bill Peckmann, a talented illustrator (ironically by hand), pushed our graphical presence to unseen levels over seven years in the ’90s. The late Jack Lyman had a long run of covering local clubs starting in 1991. The late Jerry Jess, a nationally known VW toy enthusiast, contributed his relentlessly cheerful copy for 15 years until his health failed in 2005. Then there was the late and legendary Gaston Krishman, with his connections to the auto industry in Europe. He came aboard in the early ’60s and contributed well into the 21st century.
Of course, the behind-the-scenes workhorses, not only with the Autoist but the club at large, are Shell and Lynida Tomlin, the couple with connections to the early years. Shell joined in 1967 and Lynida was the daughter of Ade Hanson, a charter member (No. 472) who joined in May 1955. Save for a two-year stretch in the mid-’80s, they’ve juggled the lugnuts and bolts of club affairs for nearly 40 years. (Lynida’s brother, Gary Hanson, is the VWCA’s longtime treasurer.)
Early on in the 1991 digital transition, we still faced limitations. I would lug the little Mac over to Betty’s house so she could key in the text. This was quantum-leap technology over the IBM Selectric, but she was a trouper until she retired after the May/June 1993 issue, as the emergence of email began to make typesetting less necessary. Betty held the title of editor emeritus until her death in 2008.
For a few years, we still handled photos the old way; that is, we were unable to import image files directly to the pages. When we did, prints first had to be scanned, a tedious task, until digital versions became more common. Email was the ultimate saving grace, eliminating the retyping and proofreading of thousands of words each issue.
Early digital issues were easily stored on small-capacity 3.5-inch floppy disks, which thankfully made the aluminum shipping box obsolete. The next generation of transferable storage, in 1994, was Iomega’s Zip drive, whose disks provided an eye-opening 100mb of space, 25 times the size of our original Mac’s hard drive. Now digital photos had a place to travel. As file sizes expanded, CDs filled the bill. Eventually, as the internet and transfer speeds grew, it became possible to upload hundreds of megabytes of files to the print company’s server.
Today, my 27-inch Mac — the seventh in almost 28 years — quickly produces a high-resolution pdf that uploads in less than a minute and is processed in Jefferson City, Mo., by Brown Printing (no connection to our colleague Betty Brown). The highly automated operation also prints individual address labels and processes the mailing.
The old editors would be impressed. Not to mention legendary club member John Eberle, who in the VWCA’s early days used his basement workshop to print the Autoist. I suspect the man with printer ink in his blood who embraced new technology at the time would be thrilled, too, at the advances we’ve witnessed.
So milestone Nos. 500 and now 501 are in the books. For this editor, that represents 233 issues covering nearly 8,400 pages and featuring thousands of photos and millions of words over nearly four decades. What a ride and a team effort it’s been. Stay tuned for more.
The average cost of a new house was nearly $11,000 — just $87 a month for renters. Gasoline was 23 cents a gallon, and seven out of 10 families now owned a car. The average wage was about $80 a week. The first McDonald’s restaurant opened and so did Disneyland. Rosa Parks, an African-American bus passenger, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala.
In New York City and the New Jersey suburbs, a quirky German subcompact sold in America for only seven years was inspiring a group of enthusiasts to form a club aimed at connecting other enthusiasts from around the country.
The year, 1955. The car, Volkswagen. The publication they used to spread the word: The VW Autoist.
More than six decades later, the publication that pledged to help members enjoy their VW (and later Audi) to the fullest has reached its 500th edition.
As originally named, the VW Auto Club of U.S. produced its first Autoist issue in February 1955, a single, shiny 9 x 12-inch sheet folded sideways, in effect a neat four-page issue. The editor was also the club’s founder, Sterling Parks Jr., a lawyer who worked for a real estate title insurance company. The Autoist described its mission as “An independent national membership society interested in the air-cooled Volkswagen, product of Western Germany.” It listed a post office box in the Bronx’s Fordham Station.
With the growing German automaker originally setting up its U.S. headquarters in New York City (later moving to Englewood Cliffs, N.J., just across the Hudson River), club organizers recognized a conduit to other VW owners.
As the Autoist would later report: “On a chilly February evening in 1955, seven Volkswagen owners and enthusiasts gathered around a table. Out of that modest beginning came one of the biggest and fastest-growing clubs in the world—the Volkswagen Club of America.
“The seven men came from all walks of life; they included a stone-mason, a lawyer, an engineer, a college student, a magazine writer, an automobile mechanic and an airport dispatcher. But they had one thing in common: a desire to form a club of VW owners which would make it possible for them to exchange information and tips, and share their enthusiasm for the world’s greatest automobile.”
Autoist No. 1 reported: “We promised a certain dealer that we would form a club, and he promised to promote recruiting. Other dealers have since promised to promote recruiting. We outlined our plan for the club to the principal representative in the U.S. of Volkswagenwerk at their U.S. offices, 720 Fifth Ave., New York. We also discussed the proposed VW Auto Club of U.S. with Victor Elmaleh of World Wide Automobiles Corp., VW distributors (importers) for New York and certain other states, at their offices.”
Bicycle shops sold early VWsIn 1954, Elmaleh, a Moroccan-born U.S. citizen and real estate developer, was among the first to import Volkswagens, a tough sell because the cars were an outlier among America’s automotive behemoths and produced in a country America was at war with just a decade earlier. The New York Times reported in Elmaleh’s obituary in 2014 that he enlisted bicycle shops and used-car lots to sell the cars, to make up for the reluctance of established dealers.
In that first Autoist, Elmaleh praised the club’s goal of remaining independent of distributors and dealers, adding, “I foresee that such a club would be invaluable to owners of the Volkswagen by helping them to obtain all the pleasure, usefulness and economy from their cars that the manufacturer wants them to have.”
He added that he would “urge our dealers to consider promoting membership to the VW Auto Club of U.S. in every way they can.”
And so it went. Only dealers and their executives were excluded from joining. “However, bundle-lot subscriptions to The VW Autoist (10 copies of each issue) are welcomed from VW dealers and distributors at $10 a year.”
With plenty of organizing for the club to do, Autoist No. 2 was five months in waiting under new editor Alvin Outcalt. Seven members made up the Board of Directors, including Parks, now one of the assistant treasurers. Further details of Parks’ role in organizing the club were never revealed in the Autoist. Issue No. 3, published in October 1955, grew to eight pages, but Parks’ name was gone from the directors lineup without explanation.
Issue No. 4, in January 1956, began to publish names and addresses of members, starting with the first 30. Though half that number resided in either New York or New Jersey, member No. 1 was Arthur Albright of Milwaukee. For reasons unknown, the club’s founder, Parks, was No. 13.
Gearing up as a monthly, No. 6 grew to 12 pages and No. 7, the first convention issue, was now 81⁄2 x 11 inches in size. It would remain in that format for the next 13 years.
A name changeNo. 8 announced that the organization’s name had been changed to Volkswagen Club of America from VW Auto Club of U.S. The Autoist reported: “VW may be as familiar to you as Chevvy [sic] and Olds to owners of those cars, but relatively few non-automotive enthusiasts know that VW stands for Volkswagen. We wanted a name that specifically identified the car.” In addition, Canadian members were said to be uneasy about the “U.S.” part of the title. At least “America” was a connection to their part of “North America.”
Outcalt, who lived in Nutley, N.J., stepped down as editor after the July 1957 issue but served as associate editor until late 1962 as well as president and board chairman in his time with the club.
New editor Don Ellenberger, from Newton, N.J., was an editor of European Car Guide and contributed to other national magazines. He wrote in his intro in issue No. 23: “In order to make the Autoist grow and to make it look more like a magazine, we are going to need a picture for the first page, or cover; this picture is going to have to be fairly large, clear and, above all, of interest to all club members. Pictures anyone? In short, it’s your Autoist and your help is needed.” Results were mixed. He continued with the Autoist until January 1960.
In the May 1958 issue, the Autoist was seeking a book and movie editor “whose duty will be to write a column on books, magazines and movies of interest to VW enthusiasts.”
By September 1958, the Autoist had an editor, managing editor, associate editor, rallye editor, technical editor, cartoon editor, safety editor, tips editor, regional club news editor, business manager and ad manager, all helping to produce monthly 12- to 16-page issues.
Ellenberger announced his retirement as editor at the 1959 convention. “I have found that I could not do justice to the Autoist and still see my wife and 11⁄2-year-old son occasionally, and work around the house as is often required of a new homeowner.” Frank Coggins, the letters editor from Newark, N.J., who was a freelance writer and photographer, took over the top spot, writing a column “Blue Pencil Notes.”
A production godsend
In October 1959, John Eberle of Delanco, N.J., who was one year into his job as business manager, wrote an explanation for why the Autoist was consistently late, up to two months behind schedule. “The work that is involved in putting out a single issue is just a little bit short of being impossible due to the fact that all on the staff of the Autoist are doing this work in their spare time.”
Copy and ads sent to editors were then forwarded to Eberle, who took them to a typesetter. Galley proofs were sent back to Coggins for review. A dummy was assembled by cutting apart the proofs and photos and pasting them in position page by page. Eberle then would set up each page with type and print a reproduction proof. These were taken to a platemaker, who photographed the reproduction proofs, inserted the ads and pictures and made the plates for the actual printing. The plates were then taken to the printer, who printed and bound the entire issue.
Eventually, Eberle — himself a printer — was doing much of this work himself in his basement shop, helping transition the Autoist from old-school letterpress printing to the new, more efficient, offset style.
The 16-page regular issue of April 1961 included a 12-page recruiting brochure. It touted to potential members a “handsome club badge, manufactured in Germany, to display on your VW” and a lot more, including tours to Germany.
The September 1961 issue listed roughly 1,800 VWCA members, their addresses and membership numbers, a mind-boggling feat given the time involved inputting all that data, presumably by the aggregator and then the typesetter. A proofreader’s bonanza. After a little over three years, Coggins left the Autoist because of “business demands” as editor of Foreign Car Guide. Soon-to-be outgoing club President George McAleer, who was also an associate editor and columnist from the Chicago suburb of Bensenville, Ill., took over the editor’s job effective with the July 1962 issue. In fall 1962, Coggins traveled to Peoria, Ill., site of the club’s fourth Oktoberfest, to address members. He covered the event for his magazine.
In September 1962, new President Carl Ziemann told the convention that he was on record as favoring far more technical coverage of the VW. The club budgeted a total of $50 per issue to pay for contributions and noted that on rare occasions one big story might garner the entire amount. McAleer, a prolific writer of tips, travel columns and other features in his tenure with the Autoist, would revive Coggins’ “Blue Pencil Notes” column.
By mid-1962, large-format issues were consistently 20 to 24 pages.
’The Joy of Being an Editor'In February 1963, the Autoist commemorated its eighth anniversary issue by reporting: “It is hoped that future issues of the Autoist will bring to the members excerpts of these early issues in hopes of helping the recent members capture the excitement and pioneering spirit of the founders of VWCA and early VW owners.”
In the July 1964 issue, McAleer was obviously at the end of his run when he wrote a blurb entitled “The Joy of Being an Editor.”
“Getting out this newsletter is no picnic!!!,” he exclaimed. “Volkswagen Club members are a diversified group — you can’t please them all. If we print jokes, members say we are silly. If we don’t, they say we have no sense of humor and are too serious. If we don’t print your contributions, we don’t appreciate genius; and if we do print them, other say the newsletter is filled with junk. If we clip things from other papers, we are too lazy to write them ourselves. If we don’t we are stuck with our own stuff. Now, like as not, some reader will say we swiped this from another newsletter. We did!”
Cryptically, the September 1964 issue advised readers to “send future material to Frances Cox,” a member in Springfield, Ohio. At the ninth convention in Atlanta, she was announced as the sixth editor, effective with the November 1964 issue. She wrote: “They say a new broom sweeps clean. Well, we don’t know just how this axiom would apply to the Autoist, as our predecessor, George McAleer, kept a pretty tidy house! However, we do represent a new trend of thought in the club, and it follows, some new ideas will evolve on various matters.”
The Autoist’s first female editor continued the “Blue Pencil Notes” column. In December 1964, she wrote, “Well, I think I am learning. There’s nothing to make you learn like having the man say, ‘Well, it’s all yours!’ This is when you either sink or swim. I think I’ll swim, as long as I continue receiving the cooperation of our regular contributors.” Conveniently, she owned and operated a printing shop in Springfield.
Nearly four years later, in August 1968, a Wisconsin mailing address mysteriously appeared under Cox’s name on Page 2, replacing her Ohio address. The September issue revealed the news: Barb Scholl, from the Badger Beetles VW Club of Milwaukee, was replacing Cox. A story on the change said Cox had to resign for personal reasons and that changes were coming to the Autoist. The personal reasons might have been related to the health of her husband, Roger Cox, who died two years later of cancer.
The October 1968 issue, highlighting the convention in Chicago, offered a more airy layout with bigger, multiple-column headlines and bigger body type, replacing the decade-plus-long style of one-column heads and gray columns lacking photos.
Format changesThe June 1969 issue delivered a major change, as President Harry Raymond announced that the Autoist would be converted to a monthly newsletter with information about the executive meetings, trustee meetings, local club events and national events, “which we would keep current and timely.”
He added: “We have felt for quite some time that the Autoist was not fulfilling the needs of the members, so now when a member joins or renews his membership, he will receive World Car Guide, a magazine devoted to the VW owner and filled with ideas and tips to help the VW owner. Therefore, we felt the Autoist in its present form was not needed.”
Subscription glitches ensued, and members in some cases waited months to get their first issue of World Car Guide.
The July 1969 issue had to be a shock to members, shrunken from the traditional 812 x11 format to the size of today’s Autoist, just 20 pages in length and stripped of its traditional magazine veneer. Cam and Vera Morrison were listed as the new co-editors, and Eberle, a major figure in the Autoist’s production since early on, was dropped from the list of staffers.
In a small-world twist, the Morrisons lived in a suburb of St. Louis, less than four miles from both the current editor and his immediate predecessor.
In a cost-cutting move, the Autoist was now typeset with an IBM Selectric typewriter, advanced at the time because users could select different font types (the tall Letter Gothic predominated). As intended, it looked more like a newsletter than the magazine it once was.
The September 1969 Milwaukee convention issue ran photos of Eberle and Scholl being recognized for their work and noted Raymond’s praise and thanks for their service.
In February and March 1970, Vera Morrison wrote of her extensive travels to Europe, lamenting what was lacking in the guide books was attitude. “Going to Europe with the wrong attitude means you’re dead, wiped out, shot down and besides that, you’ll spend a lot of money without having a good time,” she wrote.
In the August 1970 convention minutes, the editors reported, “Generally the new format has been favorably accepted by the membership and the editors have had excellent response from this body in the way of materials.”
Some daunting numbers Seven months later, the Morrisons announced they were quitting. “This is truly not a difficult job,” they wrote, “but we don’t want to underestimate the time it takes to put such a magazine together.” They did it all — editing, typesetting, layout and mailing. Just pasting the address labels alone was a time-consuming task. Sharlene Burlew of St. Louis debuted as a regular contributor of hand-drawn cover art.
In May 1971, Chris and Mary Colombo of Greenbelt, Md., were accepted as new co-editors.
In the Morrisons’ final issue, June 1971, they wrote: “For those of you interested in statistics, in the last two years we have published 458 pages of text, approximating more than a half million words … all of which had to be edited, typed and proofread.”
The Colombos, a couple with two small children, wrote in July 1971: “Mary held various writing jobs after she graduated from college. Now that she wasn’t working, she missed doing editorial work. Chris has the tenuous position of electronic engineer. So you can see that the former should know what a sentence is, and the latter believes that any group of 70 to 100 words with a period at the end, a few commas sprinkled throughout and a capital letter at the beginning is a valid sentence.”
In October 1972, in response to a request to write a job description for future editors, the Colombos reported on the grind of producing a monthly publication: “The only real starting point is the day a future editor volunteers, and the next distinguishable point is when the old editor ships off the Autoist typewriter to the new editor. Between these two points is a continuous grind consisting of slow or steady work and all out panics. Since there is no starting point during a typical month, we might as well jump in the middle and thrash around for 30 days.”
By the following January, two years into their run, they announced their retirement.
In July 1973, Steve and Jo Seifert of Youngstown, Ohio, took over as editors, and much of the body type changed to a more professional look — think Times New Roman — though that might have been just a new font attachment to the IBM Selectric.
In 1974, they reported: “We have increased the number of pages, photos, contributors and have added regular monthly features. The use of photos has also been increased. We have moved the publication date up a full week without changing the deadline date.” They reported putting in a minimum of 120 hours of production time.
In June 1975, the Seiferts gave up after a two-year stint.
With the September 1975 issue, Burlew provided the cover artwork once again as Autoist production returned to St. Louis, where it’s remained to this day. On the Page 2 staff box, the new editor was listed as “Ed,” but it was actually the workaholic club president, Walter Kuntze. In his nearly 20 years with the club at that point, he worked relentlessly … and for the next year and a half, he’d work just as hard to find a new editor.
In the meantime, the pre-Seiferts typewriter-produced look of the Autoist returned, and sons Gerry and Mark Kuntze were enlisted as production assistants.
The January 1976 Autoist reported that the computer company handling club business had gone bankrupt. Attempts were being made to get the club’s tapes and other property back. As a result, the inability to print address labels would delay a future issue, but it was unclear of the duration. A monthly no longer
Halfway through 1976, the Autoist quietly became a bimonthly with issue No. 246 for July/August. In the president’s report, Kuntze announced in the Jan/Feb 1977 issue that longtime member Betty Brown would take over as new editor. “Publishing every other month has been a help to our treasury and to the temporary editor’s time, but does it help our club survive?” he asked.
In her first issue, No. 250 (March/April 1977) Brown wrote: “Aside from having been a secretary for 30 years, my only experience in ‘editing’ per se was a stint of several years as editor of a local VWCA newsletter. However, as a recent and enthusiast ‘retiree’ from the wild business world, I agreed to take on this Autoist, to prove there’s life in the old girl yet.” Meanwhile, the Kuntze branch agreed to continue with the post-production side of address labels, bundling and mailing.
Kuntze made a point of handwriting headlines and asides to readers, often with heavy jagged underlines for emphasis.
A years-long run of full-page magazine-style VW ads ended in late 1977 with a note from Kuntze on Page 2 that was otherwise left blank. “This prime space available. It had been reserved for the VW ad but despite a contract through April ’78 we have received no ad copy, have been told not to run past ads again and have not been paid for 6 out of the last 7 ads in the Autoist. — WK.”
At this point, Volkswagen was facing growing competition from Asian automakers while in the early stages of transitioning away from its air-cooled product. Now hardly a thriving presence in the U.S., it had gone from awarding Buses as grand prizes at the club’s annual conventions to not even spending token money on a newsletter ad.
Richard Van Treuren made his debut in the Nov/Dec 1977 issue, taking over the new column penned by Kuntze and aimed at owners of VW’s new front-drive models, the Rabbit (Golf), Dasher (Passat) and Scirocco. Issue No. 500 marks his 42nd anniversary as a contributor, and he’s seldom missed a beat over more than 250 issues.
In Jan/Feb 1978, a new revenue-generator called Friends of Our Club graced the centerfold, with more than 100 dealers paying to have their names published, including offers of discounts for parts and service.
The May/June 1978 issue, which covered the grand opening of the Volkswagen’s new Rabbit plant in Pennsylvania, totaled a record 50 pages.
The Sept/Oct 1979 issue provided a welcome to members of another VW group, the FrontDriver Club, which had produced two dozen issues for fans of the new VWs but was struggling to survive. That Autoist showed up in my mailbox just a couple of months after I’d taken a new job as a copy editor with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. All FrontDriver Club members had been merged into the VWCA and were promised that club content would continue within the Autoist itself.
That would last all of three issues, but no matter. I was more intrigued by the fact that the new Autoist editor’s ZIP code was the same as mine. As someone who while growing up liked to write and also assemble crude yearbook-style memorials to whatever sports activity I was involved in, this rag-tag Autoist had some serious promise. In a matter of a few months, the publication would undergo a transformation. VWCA
Part 2: New era
Technological advances and a dedicated staff help keep the Autoist running smoothly
Maude “Betty” Brown was a retired executive secretary from Monsanto Co. in St. Louis and a life-long VW enthusiast who never shied away from a good time. She held a national office, was active in the local VWCA affiliate, contributed content to the Autoist over several years and owned a beloved beige 1965 Beetle. But now in her 60s, her idea of a good time in the late 1970s wasn’t to slave over a car-club magazine every eight weeks as its editor.
But club President Walter Kuntze could be persistent and persuasive, and after he and family members had done the job on an interim basis for nearly a year and a half while begging for a volunteer to take over, she could resist no longer. So when I noticed in the July/Aug 1979 Autoist welcoming FrontDriver Club members like myself to the VWCA, I was surprised to learn that Betty lived less than a half-mile from me. I decided to get in touch to see how I might contribute. Of course, she was thrilled that a journalist had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and I helped her finish off the Jan/Feb 1980 issue. My hands were all over the March/April issue, cleaning up the layout, making sure type was straight and eliminating handwritten headlines and column logos by using transferable press type lettering sheets.
I edited the copy, Betty touch-typed the galleys with the clacking IBM Selectric typewriter and on Page 2, I anointed myself as co-editor. Seemed appropriate: The Autoist looked dramatically better and brought praise from readers. With issue No. 268 proudly in hand, I later learned in a sitdown (or better yet showdown) with Walter in Betty’s kitchen about Rule No. 1 with the VWCA president: You did nothing club-related without his approval. His stern lecture was over-the-top ironic given his inability to find anyone to handle the Autoist for nearly 18 months. It wasn’t Walter’s style to offer praise or approval, but he did proffer a 25th anniversary VWCA-logo beer mug, at least. In our second issue I was still listed as co-editor, so he obviously realized I wasn’t too dangerous.
By our third issue, July/Aug 1980, I now carried the editor title, with Betty as assistant editor “by mutual agreement” of Betty, Walter and, of course, myself. But most importantly Walter. This was essentially the workflow for the next decade-plus. Contributors would mail their copy, I would edit it and drop it off to Betty for typing. Then came proofreading by me and corrections by her. I trimmed the white space off the galleys and used a newspaper-style hot waxer to paste the columns onto layout sheets — 18 double-truck grids of ruled white cardboard to produce 36 pages in the issue size used since August 1969.
It’s hard to imagine how the yesteryear editors were able to produce monthly issues as they did and easy to see how the work quickly consumed them. But looking back, I can’t believe I was able to maintain this bimonthly schedule for 11 years, bent over a card table for hours at a time to produce nearly 70 issues.
In 1984, at age 53, Hans Walter Kuntze died of complications of diabetes, a major setback to the club at large but also a lost connection to the Autoist’s post-production side — getting the pages to the printer, pasting labels, bundling and mailing. Then-and-current President Shell Tomlin found a Chicago area printer and created a custom aluminum box in which to ship the page grids back and forth. The lid was made to slide on and off and with our respective addresses on each side, reshipping was made more convenient. But clunky it was and not cheap to ship either.
Though Betty shared much of the work, it still took 20-30 hours on my end to get an issue completed. Younger people recognize the words “cut and paste” as representing simple computer key strokes. Back then, a surgically sharp Ex-Acto knife and straight edge performed the cutting while a hot-wax roller provided the “paste,” and often times the do-overs (the convenient CTRL-Z or CMD-Z on your keyboard) consisted of taping up the cuts and starting over. There’s some progress for you.
For several years, longtime Chicago affiliate members Greg Boltz and his late wife, Barbara, joined occasionally by grandkids, hand-attached the mailing labels, another tedious and time-consuming task.As the ’80s were pushing into the ’90s, and with a wife and two young sons competing for my time, the work became dreary. But at the 35th annual convention in 1990 outside Chicago, Tomlin opened the door to the future.
“Would a desktop publishing system be more efficient in putting out the Autoist?” he asked, matter-of-factly. As I wrote in the first digital issue — No. 334, March/April 1991 — “Would any of us like to have their first Beetle back?”
With advice from the club’s printer in Aurora, Ill., the club bought a brand new Macintosh Classic computer, desktop publishing software and a printer. Built nothing like contemporary computers, this early Mac was a ridiculous looking foot-high cube — with a grayscale display slightly smaller than a standard iPad. We got the largest hard drive available (4 megabytes — about the equivalent of one digital song file) and with it the ability to run just one program at a time. Very slowly, of course, but magically.
Given the apparent dearth of volunteers willing to take on this daunting job of editor, the digital transition was probably a key to the club’s longevity. It certainly was a turning point for me. I’d already spent a decade in my newspaper job using a mainframe-driven computer, and I was seeing how our artists in the graphics department were transitioning to Macs, a generational change in the publishing business. But the learning curve was steep — more than two months after starting from scratch with the new Mac and figuring out new software to create a publication, a transformational Autoist was done. (Of course, World Wide Web, search engine and YouTube tutorial were nowhere close to earning a place in the digital lexicon.) But I was at least on a path to learning new creative skills used in other pursuits to this day.
Though I’ve persisted way longer than ever imagined, producing this kind of publication by devoted enthusiasts is so much easier when you’re surrounded by talented and reliable contributors who have made the magazine what it is today. The VWCA has always been like any other club ever formed — typically not a whole lot of people do a bulk of the work for the masses. Editors from the early days onward pleaded for stories and particularly photos from members (the early issues were mostly words and few pictures). Editors wrote of their frustrations in getting copy on time, in getting the issue out on a consistent basis. In a burnout job, the average tenure from 1955 to 1980 was a little more than two years.
For me, I’m lucky to work with people who seem more like dedicated employees than volunteers: Rich Van Treuren (who arrived in 1977); Lois Grace and Tom Janiszewski (1988); Steve Mierz (1991); and Cliff Leppke (1993), who took over for me as Page 3 columnist after my decade run in that slot. Don Capestrain had a productive 10-year stint writing about the hot New Beetle. Pete Frost, a tuned-in enthusiast from Britain, produced more copy than I ever could make room for starting in 2001. Bill Peckmann, a talented illustrator (ironically by hand), pushed our graphical presence to unseen levels over seven years in the ’90s. The late Jack Lyman had a long run of covering local clubs starting in 1991. The late Jerry Jess, a nationally known VW toy enthusiast, contributed his relentlessly cheerful copy for 15 years until his health failed in 2005. Then there was the late and legendary Gaston Krishman, with his connections to the auto industry in Europe. He came aboard in the early ’60s and contributed well into the 21st century. Of course, the behind-the-scenes workhorses, not only with the Autoist but the club at large, are Shell and Lynida Tomlin, the couple with connections to the early years. Shell joined in 1967 and Lynida was the daughter of Ade Hanson, a charter member (No. 472) who joined in May 1955. Save for a two-year stretch in the mid-’80s, they’ve juggled the lugnuts and bolts of club affairs for nearly 40 years. (Lynida’s brother, Gary Hanson, is the VWCA’s longtime treasurer.)
Early on in the 1991 digital transition, we still faced limitations. I would lug the little Mac over to Betty’s house so she could key in the text. This was quantum-leap technology over the IBM Selectric, but she was a trouper until she retired after the May/June 1993 issue, as the emergence of email began to make typesetting less necessary. Betty held the title of editor emeritus until her death in 2008.
For a few years, we still handled photos the old way; that is, we were unable to import image files directly to the pages. When we did, prints first had to be scanned, a tedious task, until digital versions became more common. Email was the ultimate saving grace, eliminating the retyping and proofreading of thousands of words each issue.
Early digital issues were easily stored on small-capacity 3.5-inch floppy disks, which thankfully made the aluminum shipping box obsolete. The next generation of transferable storage, in 1994, was Iomega’s Zip drive, whose disks provided an eye-opening 100mb of space, 25 times the size of our original Mac’s hard drive. Now digital photos had a place to travel. As file sizes expanded, CDs filled the bill. Eventually, as the internet and transfer speeds grew, it became possible to upload hundreds of megabytes of files to the print company’s server.
Today, my 27-inch Mac — the seventh in almost 28 years — quickly produces a high-resolution pdf that uploads in less than a minute and is processed in Jefferson City, Mo., by Brown Printing (no connection to our colleague Betty Brown). The highly automated operation also prints individual address labels and processes the mailing.
The old editors would be impressed. Not to mention legendary club member John Eberle, who in the VWCA’s early days used his basement workshop to print the Autoist. I suspect the man with printer ink in his blood who embraced new technology at the time would be thrilled, too, at the advances we’ve witnessed.
So milestone Nos. 500 and now 501 are in the books. For this editor, that represents 233 issues covering nearly 8,400 pages and featuring thousands of photos and millions of words over nearly four decades. What a ride and a team effort it’s been. Stay tuned for more.