Futility Closet - 286-If Day

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from a spiral engraving to a momentous pebble. This is episode 286. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1942, Manitoba chose a startling way to promote the sale of war bonds. It staged a Nazi invasion of Winnipeg. For one gripping day, soldiers captured the city, arrested its leaders,

Starting point is 00:00:38 and oppressed its citizens. In today's show, we'll describe If Day, which one observer called the biggest and most important publicity stunt in Winnipeg's history. We'll also consider some forged wine and puzzle over some unnoticed car options. On the morning of February 19, 1942, 12-year-old Diane Edgelow was walking into Winnipeg to buy a loaf of bread for her mother when she saw that the bridge leading downtown was guarded by German soldiers. They seemed to be everywhere, she recalled 75 years later. I was so scared. When she bought the bread, she was surprised to be handed her change in Reichsmarks. Edgelow had walked into an unusual experiment in public fundraising. World War II

Starting point is 00:01:26 was raging overseas, and the Canadian government needed to promote the sale of bonds to finance the war effort. Most provinces were using rallies, concerts, and other conventional methods to build public support, but Manitoba had chosen a startling new direction. The research showed that most Canadians would have to sacrifice their standard of living to buy the next round of bonds. The Manitoba division decided that the best way to encourage them would be to show them the value of freedom, show them what they stood to lose if the Axis powers succeeded. They would do that by staging a Nazi invasion of Winnipeg. Organizer George Waite wrote to Manitoba's premier, John Bracken, that when Manitobans quote, actually see our prominent leaders and businessmen in a situation which might

Starting point is 00:02:09 arise if they fail in their efforts, the urge to go all out is more likely to be manifest. They called it IF Day. In order to make the attack seem realistic, the planners spent weeks organizing thousands of volunteers and hundreds of pieces of equipment, and they secured the cooperation of the military, business groups, politicians, labor organizations, churches, radio stations, newspapers, and private companies. In the end, it would be the largest military maneuver that the province had ever seen. It began late on Wednesday, February 18, 1942, when German dive bombers were spotted flying over Manitoba cities including Winnipeg, Brandon, and Dauphin. These were really planes from the Royal Canadian Air Force painted to look

Starting point is 00:02:51 like German aircraft. At 6 a.m. the next morning, air raid sirens sounded and around 3,500 military personnel from across the province took up positions on the city's outskirts to hold off the attackers. By 7 a.m., they'd established a defensive perimeter at a three-mile radius from City Hall. The streetlights were cut, and radio stations warned residents that the city was under attack and urged them to observe a blackout. Motorcycles could be heard in the distance as fake Nazi troops formed up on the western outskirts of St. James, about six miles west of the city. Over the next few hours, planes swooped overhead while anti-aircraft guns and other artillery fired blank rounds at imaginary

Starting point is 00:03:30 German forces advancing on the city. Civilians were at work as well. The Patriotic Salvage Corps operated mobile canteens to feed all the participants, and volunteers set up first-aid posts downtown. A thousand members of the Manitoba Volunteer Reserve worked as air raid wardens, fighting simulated fires and operating ambulances before moving to the left bank of the Red River to take up defensive positions. Light armored carriers patrolled the city, but the first line of defense was breached within 45 minutes under imaginary pressure from Nazi panzer forces, and they took up second-line positions along a perimeter two miles from City Hall while artillery provided covering fire. The invasion of Winnipeg had begun.

Starting point is 00:04:11 The Winnipeg Tribune had announced plans for the exercise on its front page two days before it took place, but not everyone read the newspapers. For instance, Diane Edgelow, the 12-year-old who started this, her family just didn't read the newspaper, so... So not everybody knew that this was... Pretend that this was... I don't know that anyone really thought that suddenly the Nazis had appeared and were invading, but there must have been people who were terribly confused, at least.

Starting point is 00:04:35 Oh my gosh. I guess we don't know their stories. Still firing blank shells at imaginary aircraft, the Canadian troops withdrew toward the center of town and the 10th Military District engineers received orders to blow up the city's bridges to stall the enemy advance. They set off dynamite on the frozen rivers near the bridges using smoke generators and coal dust to amplify the visual impact which could be seen around the city. But the imaginary Nazis were too strong. By 9.30 a.m., just three and a half hours after the first shots were fired,

Starting point is 00:05:05 the battle for Winnipeg was over. Radio listeners heard their mayor surrender to Winnipeg's new provincial leader, Erich von Nuremberg. The German occupation had begun. About 40 Nazis appeared. Actually, they were members of the Young Men's section of the Manitoba Board of Trade, wearing uniforms that had been rented from Hollywood. Some of them had painted battle scars on their faces. They patrolled the streets on captured gun carriers and in commandeered cars and buses, blocking roads and searching motorists and passengers. They sandbagged and surrounded downtown buildings such as Eaton's Department Store and the Hudson's Bay Company, and they set up anti-aircraft searchlights. They captured police headquarters,

Starting point is 00:05:48 city hall, and the legislative building, and arrested the premier, the lieutenant governor, at least four cabinet ministers, Winnipeg's mayor and his secretary, some aldermen, and the city clerk, all of whom were taken to an internment camp set up north of town with a Nazi flag flying overhead. They set up random roadblocks and began stopping buses and streetcars and asking to see identity papers, and notices were posted on church doors declaring that religious services were no longer permitted. I'm reporting here what I've learned, but I think some of these stories must be exaggerated. Some sources say the Nazis burned the Union Jack before hoisting the Nazi swastika, and that Nazis manhandled and harassed civilians.

Starting point is 00:06:23 One says that, quote, looting broke out in several stores as armed stormtroopers made off with furniture and assorted household goods. I think the worst of these stories can't be true because they would have landed the city in legal trouble. Journalist Graham Chandler interviewed some of the surviving participants in 2017 on the 75th anniversary of the event, and George Hoffman, who had played a Nazi, said they didn't take prisoners. He said, quote, no, in fact, we were briefed on what we should and should not do.

Starting point is 00:06:52 One of the things we were not to do is get physical with these guys because it was all a big act and we didn't want anybody to get hurt. So I don't know precisely where the truth lies, but I'll report what I've read in the sources I've found. These measures were taken only for appearance sake, of course, but the appearance was chilling. The city of Winnipeg was renamed Himmlerstadt after the head of the Nazi SS, and Portage Avenue was renamed Adolf-Hitler-Strasse. The morning edition of the Winnipeg Tribune was replaced by a special four-page paper called Das Winnipeger Lügenblatt, which translates roughly to the Winnipeg Lie newspaper. Its cover stories were printed in German, and its interior pages combined tongue-in-cheek editorials with real-life stories from occupied European cities. As the city fell, the Nazis followed their plan for occupation, installing a governor,

Starting point is 00:07:35 taking over the media, and issuing decrees to the population. Though the new order lasted only a single day, it was surprisingly comprehensive thanks to the thorough planning of the organizers. Nazis patrolled the city, barricades and gun posts were set up outside some stores, anti-aircraft guns were set up near the legislature, and snipers were posted on rooftops. The following notice was distributed to city residents. Announcement. Your attention. 1. This territory is now a part of the Greater Reich and under the jurisdiction of Colonel Erich von Nuremberg, Gauleiter, that is, provincial leader, of the Führer. Two, no civilians will be permitted on the streets between 9.30 p.m. and daybreak. Three, all public places are out of bounds to civilians, and not more than eight persons

Starting point is 00:08:18 can gather at one time in any place. Four, every householder must provide billeting for five soldiers. in any place. Four, every householder must provide billeting for five soldiers. Five, all organizations of a military, semi-military, or fraternal nature are hereby disbanded and banned. Girl guide, boy scout, and similar youth organizations will remain in existence but under direction of the gauleiter and storm troops. Six, all owners of motor cars, trucks, and buses must register same at occupation headquarters, where they will be taken over by the army of occupation. 7. Each farmer must immediately report all stocks of grain and livestock,

Starting point is 00:08:52 and no farm produce may be sold except through the office of the Commandant of Supplies in Winnipeg. He may not keep any for his own consumption, but must buy it back through the Central Authority in Winnipeg. 8. All national emblems, excluding the the swastika must be immediately destroyed. 9. Each inhabitant will be furnished with a ration card and food and clothing may only be purchased on presentation of this card. 10. The following offenses will result in death without trial. A. Attempting to organize resistance against the army of occupation. B. Entering or leaving the army of occupation. B, entering or leaving the

Starting point is 00:09:25 province without permission. C, failure to report all goods possessed when ordered to do so. And D, possession of firearms. No one will act, speak, or think contrary to our decrees. Published and ordered by the authority of Erich von Nuremberg, Gauleiter. It went on. Clergymen and politicians were arrested. Clothing, metals, and other supplies were confiscated for the use of the occupying army. It was announced that city residents would pay for the cost of the occupation and that Canadian currency would be replaced with German. At noon, two dozen German soldiers burst into the cafeteria at the Great West Life Insurance Building on Lombard Avenue and confiscated food for themselves. And they ransacked an apartment building downtown and roughed up some newspaper sellers and tore up their papers. Commuters on the electric company's streetcars received special transfers that read

Starting point is 00:10:14 verboten, it is forbidden to remain seated in the presence of a German officer. Some passengers were roughed up and required to show their registration papers. Freedom of expression was suppressed in favor of intellectual conformity. Schoolchildren from 6 to 16 years old were forced to join the Hitler Youth. Stormtroopers took over Robert H. Smith School, arrested the principal, and decreed that henceforward students would learn only the Nazi truth. Other students were dismissed early so they could listen to the radio play Swastika Over Canada on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's network. And books that were deemed contrary to Nazi philosophy were burned in a bonfire outside the Carnegie Library on William Avenue. Actually, these books

Starting point is 00:10:54 had already been earmarked for destruction because they were damaged or outdated. Happily, the exercise was over by 5.30 p.m., when the imaginary invasion evaporated as quickly as it had materialized. A parade marched down Portage Avenue with banners and signs reading, It Must Not Happen Here and Buy Victory Bonds. And the Norwegian minister to the United States, Wilhelm de Morgenstern, spoke about conditions in Norway under occupation. He had spent the day in a fake Nazi internment camp. If Day brought international recognition to Manitoba, the story was covered by Life, Time, Newsweek, and scores of newspapers from New York to New Zealand,

Starting point is 00:11:31 and 40 million people saw newsreel footage. And, of course, it received wide coverage within Canada. The Globe and Mail wrote that Manitoba, quote, deserves a special word of commendation in the victory loan campaign because of the unique effort made to show what failure would mean. Winnipeg was in the hands of Hitler and his ironclad gangsters for a day, figuratively speaking. Winnipeg had a day of it in imagination with enough real adventure to make the imagination work. The U.S. Treasury and its Office of Facts and Figures asked for details that might be useful in its own bond drives, and Vancouver bought the surplus Reichsmarks for its own if-day. What mattered, of course, were the results, and the organizers in Winnipeg hung a huge 40-foot map of Manitoba outside the Bank of Montreal building at Portage and Main. The map was divided into 45 sections, each of which

Starting point is 00:12:21 represented $1 million in victory bond sales. For each million subscribed, a Union Jack would be added to the map to show progress toward the goal. The map was filled with Union Jacks by Tuesday, March 3rd, meaning that Manitobans had met their goal and symbolically liberated the province with four days to spare. In the end, they raised nearly $65 million, almost a billion dollars in today's money. Of that total, more than half had been bought by Winnipeggers themselves. University of Winnipeg historian Jody Perrin told the Winnipeg Free Press, the number that really sticks out for me is one in three. That is the ratio of Winnipeggers who subscribed to buy a victory bond. That's not one in three wage earners,

Starting point is 00:13:01 that's of every person in the city. Nationwide, Canadians had beaten their objective by more than a third, and much of the success was attributed to IFDE, which had made news across the continent. Beyond the bond sales, IFDE had succeeded as a practical undertaking. The military got unprecedented training in urban warfare, and there had been only two casualties. One soldier broke his ankle, and a woman cut her thumb while slicing bread in a blacked-out apartment. Throughout all this, of course, no one had thought that there was a real danger that the Nazis might invade Manitoba. By this time, both the Soviet Union and the United States had entered the war,

Starting point is 00:13:38 and there was a general sense that the Allies would soon have the upper hand. Perrin, the historian, says that IFDE succeeded because of its vivid theatrics and because so many people had a direct connection to the conflict. About one in eight Canadians served in the war, so everyone knew someone in uniform. And that meant that a demonstration like this touched them personally. Perrin said, the Second World War touched everybody. It wasn't hard to get people mobilized and motivated because everybody had a stake in it. The main story in episode 139 was about the Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren,

Starting point is 00:14:23 and then I did a follow-up in episode 141 about the English forger Tom Keating. Clara Ligus, who calls herself another fan from Germany, wrote, You talked about a few art forgers in your episodes, so listeners probably already mentioned the German art forger Wolfgang Beltrachi.

Starting point is 00:14:40 Similar to van Meegeren, Beltrachi didn't copy paintings, but created new paintings in the same style. He forged paintings across styles and periods. He was convicted in 2011 and released in 2015. I admit, I kind of like a good art forgery. There is a lot of skill involved, and as long as they only sell to private buyers and not to museums... So, no, we hadn't heard about Beltracchi before you wrote in, Clara, so thanks. And, yeah, a good forgery really does require a lot of skill and can be rather impressive, though, as you suggest, not so admirable if they try to dupe others, as, unfortunately, Beltracchi did.

Starting point is 00:15:22 Beltracchi was born Wolfgang Fischer in 1951, but he took his wife's last name when they married in 1992. His father was an art restorer and muralist who had sometimes painted copies of works by well-known masters to sell for small sums. Beltracchi began creating paintings in the style of old masters as a teenager to sell at flea markets, but unlike his father, he created new works that hadn't previously existed. He later specialized in artists of the early 20th century, as it was easier to get materials that would have been used by them. The Encyclopedia Britannica site said that Beltracchi is, thought to be, the most successful art forger of all time, as he fooled the international art world into buying many of his paintings for rather high

Starting point is 00:16:00 prices. He was so skilled that some of his paintings in the style of the German expressionist Heinrich Kompendank were included in a catalog of Kompendank's works by the leading scholar on the artist. Beltrachi and his wife Helena Beltrachi constructed a story about how the couple had come into possession of a collection of pre-World War II paintings and then went to some lengths to support the story, for example, creating a blurry photo of Helena on period photography paper that was said to be Helena's grandmother, and buying period frames and canvases to reuse for his forgeries. Many of Beltracchi's fakes sold very well in auctions, with some of the paintings selling for high six-figure sums, such as a fake

Starting point is 00:16:41 Compendant painting that was bought by actor Steve Martin for $860,000 in 2004. After Beltracchi mastered the style and technique of painter Max Ernst in the early 2000s, the leading scholar of Ernst officially authenticated a Beltracchi fake, which eventually sold at a Paris gallery for about 5.5 million euros, or about 7 million dollars, in 2006. Beltracchi's forgery was uncovered in 2008 when a forensic specialist examined a purported compendant supposedly from 1914 and discovered that the paint included a pigment that wasn't yet in use at that time. Beltracchi had tended to be pretty careful about the details, but apparently he had used a paint that contained a pigment that

Starting point is 00:17:25 wasn't listed on its packaging. More paintings from the same collection were tested, and Beltracchi ended up admitting to 14 forgeries that had sold for a total of 45 million dollars. Both he and his wife served jail time and were ordered to pay restitution of 6 million euros, though that is estimated to be but a fraction of the total prices paid for all of his forgeries. Beltracchi has acknowledged forging more than 300 paintings by more than 50 artists over 35 years, though the Times of London reported in 2014 that German police had recovered a total of 58 Beltracchi forgeries, leaving an unknown number still in art collections. Another problematic consequence has been that because there were large lawsuits

Starting point is 00:18:05 against some of the experts who authenticated Beltracchi's forgeries, some experts started refusing to authenticate paintings. Beltracchi is still painting, though he says he has no plans to return to forgery, despite the temptations to do so. He told the Times, If you imagine that after breakfast you can paint a little painting that can earn you 1 million euros or 2 million euros, then it's not so easy not to do it. That makes sense. It's so precarious, though. Like, you put all that effort into this whole career.

Starting point is 00:18:33 He did. And all it takes is one mistake to bring the whole thing down. That's exactly right. But he got away with it for 35 years. So I suppose there's a thought that maybe he could have continued to get away with it. But you probably never feel secure, you know? On the topic of forgery, Clara also mentioned the wine forger, Rudy Korniawan. I hadn't really considered the concept of wine forgery before, but apparently that is a thing.

Starting point is 00:18:57 And Korniawan has been called the world's biggest wine forger, who actually made quite a fortune over several years from the sales of counterfeit rare wines that were actually blends of other wines or in bottles with fraudulent labels, selling $35 million worth of wine in 2006 alone. Korniawam was born in Indonesia in 1976 and moved to the U.S. in the late 1990s. He apparently had a fair amount of flair and bravado. It's reported, for example, that he started offering the buyers of his wine an unheard of guarantee that would supposedly protect them against fraud. But questions started being raised about how so young a collector had managed to amass so many very rare bottles of wine. And part of his downfall came from his neglecting to do his

Starting point is 00:19:41 homework and offering wines of vintages that didn't actually exist. For example, bottles of Clos Saint-Denis from the vineyard Domaine Ponceau, reportedly from 1945 to 1971, started appearing on the market, which greatly surprised Laurent Ponceau, the head of the winemaking house, since his family had only started making that wine in 1982, and Ponceau started looking into the situation. In addition, the American billionaire Bill Koch found fake bottles in his wine collection and hired a private investigator. According to Jerry Rothwell, one of the directors of Sour Grapes, a documentary on Korniawan, Koch had even more resources than the FBI to look into the potential fraud, and without his efforts, Korniawan might never have been brought to trial. Korniawan was arrested by the FBI in 2012 and charged with three counts each

Starting point is 00:20:31 of wire fraud and mail fraud for trying to sell counterfeit wine, and in 2014 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in order to pay a penalty of $20 million and to repay more than $28 million in restitution to the victims of his fraud. The Guardian reports that this was the first case of wine fraud to be successfully prosecuted in the U.S., though it is very unlikely to be the only example of it. The newspaper notes that the winemaker Ponceau has said that wine fraud is actually a much larger problem than is being acknowledged, and that he suspects, for example, that about 80% of the Burgundy alleged to be from before 1980 is actually fake. The Guardian notes that, the most expensive wines are so rarely drunk, few can claim to be expert on how they taste. On the occasions they are opened, it is usually

Starting point is 00:21:16 courtesy of a generous host. It is poor guestmanship to lob aspersions on any proffered bottle, let alone one that cost as much as your car. And they go on to note that multiple scientific studies have demonstrated that even supposed wine experts are not much better than chance at identifying different wines. Rothwell is quoted as saying, Anything that depends on what people want to believe is a complex area. That whole thing is fascinating. So, as you say, there could be a lot more fraud out there. Especially as people aren't drinking the wine. I mean, you don't drink a super expensive bottle

Starting point is 00:21:50 of wine because unlike a painting, right, the painting stays, but you drink the bottle of wine and now it's worthless. And as you say, socially, even if you have private doubts, you're not going to say anything. That's very interesting. One of the things that stood out to me in this story was how Kurniawan's lawyers attempted to characterize what he'd done. One of his lawyers, while arguing in court for a reduced sentence, tried to make the case that Kurniawan's victims were all wealthy people who could afford to lose some money. And he said, nobody died, nobody lost their job, nobody lost their savings. And the judge interrupted him to ask, is the principle that if you're rich, then the person who did the defrauding shouldn't be punished? The defense also tried to make the case that they were shocked by Kurniawan's prison sentence because wine fraud is so rampant and they believed he was being unfairly singled out. I also thought that it was interesting that, as has sometimes been the case with art forgeries,

Starting point is 00:22:47 a market has developed for Kurniawan's forged wines. He had a reputation for having a really rare palate, capable of distinguishing the characteristics of different vintages, and that allowed him to create his forged blends. So there are some who want to buy the counterfeit wine to see if they can tell the difference between what they were purported to be and what they actually are. And while I was working on the wine forgery story, I happened across a news item about fake scotch being exposed by carbon dating. Apparently, it's a real problem that whiskey that's alleged to be distilled in a particular year

Starting point is 00:23:17 is often not as old as is claimed. Rare bottles of whiskey can sell for as much as over a million dollars, so there can be a lot of incentive to catch these counterfeit whiskeys. In 2018, researchers used carbon dating to determine that almost 40% of randomly selected sample bottles of vintage scotch were actually fraudulent. And a new study published in January found that nearly half of the bottles of purportedly rare whiskeys tested weren't as old as they were alleged to be. In some cases, the discrepancies were really notable,

Starting point is 00:23:47 such as a bottle of scotch that was labeled 1903 being carbon dated as having been distilled in 2011 or later. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us, and please keep sending us your follow-ups and comments to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And I do still appreciate pronunciation advice. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an odd-sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Brian Voller. Between 1970 and 1977, the Chevrolet Vega, a

Starting point is 00:24:32 two-door subcompact car, had available the special VK5 option pack. Unlike most option packages, the choice to include this one would almost always be made by the dealer rather than by the buyer of the car. Its inclusion or absence would go entirely unnoticed by most car owners. And I should explain that this option pack included a few different things, including a baffle in the oil pan, an off-center filler caps in the battery, a plug in the fuel tank vent line, tilting the windshield washer bottle 45 degrees, and plastic spacers between the splash pans and the engine to reinforce the motor mount. So all things that, like Brian said, most owners would never even know were there.

Starting point is 00:25:14 So what would be the reason for this option package? Okay, suppose I'm a dealer who elects to do this for a given car. Yeah. Am I doing that based on who buys the car? No. Okay, good. Based on how I expect the car to be driven? No. No. Okay. Wow. Well, what the heck else is there? Would it help me to pursue these specific technical challenges? Probably not. I don't

Starting point is 00:25:41 need to figure out what those are trying to do. Not, I think that might be challenging. Although if you happen to, I read some of them to you in case you happen to see a pattern, but. All right. So the dealer, the dealer would make these changes in some, some cars unbeknownst to the buyer. The dealer didn't make the changes, but the dealer would request this option pack to be added to the car. Okay. So, but the, the, the buyer would drive off with these options. And probably unaware that he or she even had them.

Starting point is 00:26:13 I like the puzzle. Okay. So did the people who bought the cars with this option package have something in common? No. No. I'm getting cars with this option package, have something in common? No. No. I'm getting nowhere with this. Really? Right.

Starting point is 00:26:30 And it's the dealer who would have chosen. No, I know, but it sounds like, why else would you just do this? And it wasn't just done randomly, obviously. It was not done randomly.

Starting point is 00:26:40 Was it done in certain geographical locations? Possibly, but I don't know. But that's a possibility. Oh, but I asked you whether it was related to how they expected the car to be driven. Right, it did not relate to how they expected the car to be driven. Would the dealers who chose to do this say they're doing it to help the buyers in some way?

Starting point is 00:27:09 some way? I suppose if you get broad enough, but I suppose there would be some potential benefit to the buyer, but it would be a little abstract what that would be. Was it a benefit to the dealer or the Chrysler company? Chevrolet. Chevy, sorry. Yeah, and it was more a benefit to the dealer. Did it help them? That's way too early, the 70s, to be tracking their movements somehow or anything like that? No, no. Did it give them information about? No, it's way too early. So this benefit, was it financial? Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:35 Did it encourage people to keep buying Chevys? No. Financial. Don't tell me it led the car to break down and so they had to bring it in for service no i'm very glad that's a no no so okay these option package then caused the cars presumably to behave or perform differently right i wouldn't say so would the would the driver necessarily have noticed anything? No. The driver might not ever know unless

Starting point is 00:28:07 they happen to know to look for these things and they were really poking around their own engine and knew what to expect otherwise. But you could just buy one of these and drive it for however long and never understand. And you would never know the difference. And if your next door neighbor had one without this option package, you wouldn't

Starting point is 00:28:23 possibly ever notice the difference between yours and their car. Did it have something to do with the ongoing maintenance of the car? No. No. No, it had nothing to do with the buyer of the car or what was going to happen to the car after the buyer bought it. Did it use up parts that they needed to get out of the shop? No, no. It's the financial benefit.

Starting point is 00:28:51 Yes. So that financial benefit doesn't, we said, come through sales of additional automobiles down the road. Right. Or service. Right. Future service. It made the cars cheaper for the dealers. Cheaper to sell. Well, I don't know. Cheaper for the dealers. Cheaper to sell?

Starting point is 00:29:06 Well, I don't know. Cheaper for the dealers to... To manufacture? Well, not cheaper for the dealers to manufacture, but they could get the cars... The dealers could get the cars cheaper if they included this option pack. Was it because these parts were being used instead of other more expensive parts? No. As a matter of fact, sometimes there were extra parts, like a baffle in the oil pan,

Starting point is 00:29:31 that would have to be added in, or like special plastic spacers to reinforce the motor mounts. So they were sometimes adding in extra parts, but it would still make it cheaper for the dealer. And this was only for certain buyers? No, no, it wasn't only for certain buyers. Oh, it was for all buyers of this car? Well, dealers who chose this option pack. Would give it to everyone who bought the Vega. Yes. But some dealers didn't.

Starting point is 00:29:53 They might not have. Choose to do it. They might not have. Okay, that's helpful then. But the ones who chose to just give it to everyone who bought it. Yes, yes, yes. They didn't have anything about the buyers in mind when they did this. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:01 Yes. They didn't have anything about the buyers in mind when they did this. So why would you add all these, make all these changes to a car that, you wouldn't say the car needed them? Was that something to do with safety? No. And you say it wasn't geography that distinguished the ones who got it from the ones who didn't. It could have been, but I don't know. Why would you?

Starting point is 00:30:25 So, okay, there's financial benefit, which is the only thing I have to come to. Right, right. Why would you? So, okay, this financial benefit, which is the only thing I have to come to. Right, right. Did that come back to the dealer or to Chevy itself? It would have made it cheaper for the dealer to get the car. Was that because they were given an incentive, like some financial incentive to install this package? No.

Starting point is 00:30:42 What adds to the price of a car besides the manufacturer of the car if you're a dealer and you need... Shipping? Shipping. Yep. So if they took a car with this option, the option package came with the car from the plant? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:55 It's not that it's something the dealer installed? Correct. It made the car easier to ship somehow? It did. Brian says, the VK5 option allowed the car to be shipped by a special rail car, the Vertipak, that could hold 30 Vegas instead of the normal 18

Starting point is 00:31:09 by storing them in the vertical nose-down position. The extra options allowed for cars to be shipped with fluids which would otherwise drain out or foul the cylinders. This meant they could be driven on and off the Vertipak without any modifications or delay aside from removing the plastic spacers. So it's just a I mean, it's just a bizarre way that they were shipping these

Starting point is 00:31:28 cars that was much, much cheaper. If they're vertical, you could ship more of them, obviously. Yes, yes. And you could just, it's crazy. Brian sent a bunch of links that included photos that show how this actually works if people want to see it, because it's just wild. And it seems that the Vega had a lot of problems. One of Brian's sources called it a, quote, truly awful, hideous, forgettable stain on Chevrolet's past. But this new shipping method was actually pretty inventive and really did lower shipping costs significantly. Which I guess is why they did it.

Starting point is 00:31:57 Yeah, you could ship 30 at a time instead of 18. Made a big difference. That's fascinating. So thanks so much to Brian for that puzzle. And if you have a puzzle that you'd like to have us try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support a section of the website at futilitycloset.com

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Starting point is 00:32:42 At our website, you can graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 concise curiosities. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us,

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Futility Closet - 286-If Day

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