310 CHRISTOPHER NEUMAIER AND ANDREAS LUDWIG
attention to personal transportation. As a result, production levels were
low, and technological innovations were lacking. The production fi gures
for 1971 indicate the degree to which the automobile industry in the GDR
had fallen behind that of the FRG: whereas 3.6 million cars were built in
West Germany that year, only 134 thousand left the factories in East Ger-
many.^84 The only car models manufactured in the GDR were the Wartburg
and the Trabant. Both models were last overhauled in the late 1950s and
the mid-1960s, resulting in long wait times for new cars of over more
than ten years. The car boom, as it were, did not hit the GDR until the
1970s, which was much later than in the West.^85
On the other side of the Wall in West Germany, dramatic dips in sales,
the arrival of foreign-made cars, and a changing demand structure fed
into the transition from a seller’s to a buyer’s market. In response, the
automobile industry tried to boost the purchase of replacement cars by
reducing their average lifetime—in particular because it was not yet
common for families to own a second car in the 1970s. Automakers also
modifi ed their product strategies in light of the fact that cars had be-
come more of a way to distinguish social status. As part of this shift, the
major manufacturers expanded their product ranges vertically and hori-
zontally—that is, with a greater variety of makes and models. During this
phase, brands, models, technology, and comfort features became all the
more important in drawing lines of distinction because the main question
was no longer about who owned a car, but rather what kind of car some-
body drove. This refl ected the general trend toward consumption as a
means of making social distinctions and later becoming an expression of
personalized consumer preferences.^86 Moreover, specifi c cultural values
came to be associated with the respective brands and models. Ford and
Opel stood for a kind of smug narrow-mindedness (Spießigkeit), while
Mercedes cars were considered to be a symbol of “the establishment.”
Used French compact cars such as Citroën’s Ente (2CV) or Renault’s R4,
on the other hand, were seen as symbols of an “automobile counter cul-
ture.”^87 Consumer preference also changed to an extent in the 1970s be-
cause the trading-up principle—the idea that a new car had to be more
expensive and more exclusive than the old one—was replaced for a short
time by the trading-down principle at the beginning of the decade. Manu-
facturers also reacted to this trend and introduced new market segments,
such as compact cars. Smaller, cheaper, and more effi cient cars such as
the VW Golf hence became the conscious preference of consumers.^88
Nonetheless, such rational criteria were still mediated by symbolic,
social, and psychological desires that were played upon in advertising
and marketing.^89 The news of a technological product innovation, for ex-
ample, was communicated via ads in terms of “symbolically infl ated core