A bit more info on Major Ivan Hirst for anybody who's interested
from the Vintage VW & Aust.VW lists...

Steve O.

>
>      London Times   March 20, 2000
>
>               IVAN HIRST
>
>  Ivan Hirst, TD, car engineer, was born on March 1,
>  1916. He died on March 10 aged 84.
>
>  AMID the bomb-blasted ruins of a German factory, Sir
>  William Rootes, who with his brother Reggie had founded
>  the British car dynasty, poured scorn on a young officer's
>  plans. "If you think you're going to build cars in this place
>  you're a bloody fool, young man," he told 29-year-old Major
>  Ivan Hirst.
>
>  Rootes, later Lord Rootes, had not counted on the
>  determination of the young REME officer and his
>  colleagues, and over the next half century some 22 million
>  Volkswagen Beetles rolled off the production line. The
>  German plant, at Wolfsburg in the north of the country, had
>  been built to turn Hitler's dream of a small, cheap reliable
>  "People's Car" into reality. Only a handful of prototypes
>  were built, however, before the plant was commandeered
>  for the German war effort.
>
>  By the war's end Wolfsburg was in ruins and two thirds of
>  the factory had been destroyed by Allied bombs. Hirst's
>  commanding officer, Colonel Michael McEvoy, who had
>  seen the Volkswagen at the 1938 Berlin Motor Show,
>  suggested the pair of them rig up a prototype. They painted
>  it military green and showed it to their Allied commanders,
>  winning an immediate order for 20,000 cars.
>
>  "Nobody gave me a real brief," Hirst once explained. "I
>  was just told to go there and do something." British
>  Intelligence weeded out Nazis from the factory's
>  management, Russian slave labourers were sent home,
>  returning German POWs were offered employment, and by
>  1946 an 8,000-strong workforce - living in huts and
>  surviving on potato soup - were labouring round the clock to
>  turn out 1,000 Beetles a month.
>
>  Nevertheless, Hirst was faced with continual staffing
>  difficulties: "It was a time of de-Nazification and the locals
>  were making claims and counter-claims about each other
>  all the time. Workers would arrive one day, be kicked out
>  the next and turn up again in a couple of weeks." By 1947
>  production was up to 2,500 a month and soon surplus
>  models were being sold for export. British motoring
>  manufacturers expresed dismay as the car's success grew.
>  Some openly wondered which side Hirst was on.
>
>  In Whitehall the Treasury had no doubt. It encouraged the
>  exports because the Beetle brought in badly needed
>  currency for Germany, saving the British taxpayer money.
>
>  Years later Hirst described his role in what was a
>  quasi-military operation: "I inherited the basic car but I
>  introduced to the factory valuable lessons I'd learnt in the
>  Army. I arranged an efficent back-up service and ensured
>  that no car left the plant without spare parts being readily
>  available."
>
>  Born in Saddleworth, Ivan Hirst was educated at the local
>  grammar school and at the University of Manchester. He
>  worked in the family's optical instrument firm, high up in the
>  Pennines.
>
>  Soldiering with the Territorial Army at the Huddersfield drill
>  hall and driving grand cars were his main interests, but
>  come the Second World War he was promoted to the rank
>  of major in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment and was
>  evacuated at the fall of France. Transferred to the Royal
>  Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in 1942, Hirst
>  managed a tank repair shop in Brussels after D-Day before
>  being sent to Wolfsburg.
>
>  Eventually, tipped off that his masters felt it was time for a
>  German to take over, Hirst recruited Heinrich Nordhoff, a
>  former production manager with Opel, to his team.
>  Nordhoff was appointed as managing director in January
>  1949 where he remained until his death in 1968.
>
>  Hirst left Wolfsburg in August 1949, a month before the
>  company was formally handed over to a trust run by the
>  West German Government, and later worked in the Foreign
>  Office's German section before joining the secretariat of
>  the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
>  Development in Paris. He retired back to the Pennines he
>  knew and loved in 1975, where he became a popular figure,
>  inspecting passing VWs and welcoming interviewers.
>
>  Meanwhile, the Beetle, with its curious rear engine and
>  frog-eyed lamps, could not be squashed. When
>  Volkswagen stopped production in Germany in 1978,
>  assembly was transferred to Mexico at the request of
>  President Salinas.
>
>  Wreathed in pipesmoke, with his cravat and clipped white
>  moustache maintaining the military air, Hirst was modest
>  about his achievements, although he did find it strange that
>  ultimately the Allies had contributed so much to the German
>  economic miracle: "Perhaps as a country we've not been
>  too willing to accept some of our own ideas and wisdom,"
>  he mused. "I'm still bewildered as to how things have
>  turned out."
>
>  His wife, Marjorie, predeceased him. They had no children.
>
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