Hello from Germany,
"überwiegen" = "overweighing" = "more from that one" = more Beeskows than Lawrences. Rometsch actually did not even extend the "registered design protection" ("Gebrauchsmusterschutz" in German) for the Beeskow model in 1959, since they expected the Lawrence to replace the Beeskow (Rometsch requested the "registered design protection" for the Lawrence for 3 years only). Which especially in the important US market did not work, since the Lawrence was too much American. In the Grundmann collection there is a lot of paperwork left of letters between Rometsch Berlin and Rometsch Hollywood (Arthur Zwebell and W. Rudinger) that tell about the problems they had in the US.
Do you know the book "Die Edel-Käfer " (The Precious Beetles) from Bernd Wiersch, former director of the VW museum?
He did a lot of research and there is a large chapter on Rometsch. On page 72 he states that around 1956 "in six years 500 Beeskows have been made". And of course Mr. Wiersch is aware of with which body number Rometsch started...
What other cars did Rometsch built? The Goliath GP 700 Coupe 25x (beginning 1951), Hansa 1500 Sportcabriolet, Firat 1400 Sportcabrio, Fiat 1100 TV Coupe (50x, beginning 1954), Fiat 1200 Sportcoupe, Opel Kapitän Coupe (1956), DKW Kleinlieferwagen and of course the 4 door taxi-cab-beetle.
In Kaulmanns speech (https://www.historische-vws.de/goodies/rometsch.htm) from 1994 he talks about the times before he went to Rometsch (which must have been in 1956):
"Der Verkauf der Fahrzeuge erfolgte bis zu meinem Eintritt bei Rometsch zum Selbstkostenpreis, lediglich an den Reparaturen wurde verdient. Doch ergab eine Nachkalkulation durch mich, daß an jedem der 280 bisher gebauten Modelle Typ Beeskow je nach Jahr tatsächlich ein Minus zwischen 2000 und 3500 DM erwirtschaftet wurde. "
means: "The price of the cars was the same price they needed to produce them, before I came to Rometsch, they earned only money when repairing them. But when I recalculated, I figured out that Rometsch actually lost between 2000 and 3500 German Marks on each of the 280 so far built Beeskow models"
which from my point of view is hard to believe - but the number of Beeskows is interesting: 280 until (mid or end of?)1956.
And another sentence is interesting:
"Der Fortschritt, der durch mein Akkordsystem erzielt wurde, wird am deutlichsten, wenn man das alte und das neue Arbeitssystem gegenüberstellt. Als ich bei Rometsch anfing, bauten 34 Mann pro Monat 4 Autos. Nachdem ich mein Akkordsystem eingeführt hatte, bauten 11 Mann 5 Autos pro Monat."
means: "this is the progress my Accord-payment-system made: when I started at Rometsch, 34 workers built 4 cars a month. When I started my Accord-payment-system 11 workers built 5 cars a month."
Regards Jörg
Edited by user
14 years ago
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Reason: Not specified