Jack Rouse is navigating a muddy construction site in Wolfsburg, Germany, trying to spare his ostrich-skin cowboy boots serious damage. The 62-acre patch of land is swarming with cement trucks, forklifts, and front-end loaders that lurch forward without warning. Workers in red coveralls scurry around building scaffolds. Cranes are putting the finishing touches on a pair of 20-story cylindrical glass towers that will eventually hold 400 cars each. The future home of Autostadt, the Volkswagen Group's automotive theme park and new-car pickup center, is about as far from virtual reality as you can get.

"You can already use a computer and double-click to shop for cars," says Rouse, 60, ceo of Jack Rouse Associates. His Cincinnati firm has done theme-park design for clients like Universal Studios, Six Flags, and Legoland Windsor. "What companies are finding they have to do is create experiences that simply can't ever be replicated on the Net--showrooms, tours, theme parks." For the Volkswagen Group--which includes not just the Volkswagen marque but also Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce, Seat in Spain, Skoda in Czechoslovakia, and a line of trucks--"there is a mythology behind these brands. The goal with Autostadt is to emphasize that mythology--the emotional connection that can really affect purchase decisions and loyalty."

Volkswagen Gets Physical (and Emotional)

The scale of the Autostadt project is impressive, even when viewed against the backdrop of Volkswagenwerk Wolfsburg, the sprawling brick factory complex that the automaker describes as the world's largest single-site car-manufacturing facility. Approximately 800 construction workers are toiling at the Auto City, which Volkswagen expects will attract more than a million visitors a year after it opens in June.

The company will spend about $500 million to erect 12 buildings, including a 174-room Ritz-Carlton hotel in the shadow of the smokestack-topped plant that generates power for the factories. The juxtaposition couldn't be more telling. The 20th-century Volkswagen manufacturing colossus is sharing a stage with the 21st-century Volkswagen, purveyor of fine service, compelling experiences, and, of course, high-quality cars. By inviting customers onto its home turf to pick up new cars--or simply to while away an afternoon strolling the landscaped grounds and thrilling to driving simulations-- Volkswagen thinks it can make that link between corporation and customer stronger than any Web site ever could.

The town of Wolfsburg, about 100 miles west of Berlin, hardly existed before the Volkswagen factory was built in 1938, under Adolf Hitler's regime. Hitler helped Ferdinand Porsche, the legendary car designer regarded as the father of Volkswagen, launch the factory with the production of the populist Kraft-durch-Freude Wagen ("strength-through-joy car"), but only 200 of the cars were produced before World War II started, and the factory turned to producing things like personnel carriers and amphibious vehicles. During the war, more than two-thirds of the production facilities at Wolfsburg were destroyed. Unfortunately, the Autostadt project adheres to the Disney doctrine of avoiding history's darker moments, and it won't address Volkswagen's wartime saga.

Volkswagen spent several years rebuilding after the war and soon started producing the first generation of Beetles. The car came to America in 1949, and by 1972, Beetles surpassed Ford's Model T as the car with the longest production run. Throughout the 1960s, many American students traveling through Europe would stop in Wolfsburg, buy a Beetle, drive it around the Continent, and then have it shipped back to the United States; Jack Rouse did it before he started college. But as the Beetle fell from favor in the late 1970s, the tradition ended, and only Volkswagen employees could pick up their new cars at the factory.

In part, the Autostadt project was born of civic pride. Wolfsburg has always been regarded as a charmless industrial town--the only true landmark is a 14th-century castle on a hill--and Volkswagen, to coincide with the Expo 2000 World's Fair in nearby Hannover, wanted to create a draw for tourists. "The idea was born in late 1995, to make the region more attractive, as part of the reunification of Germany and the reinstatement of Berlin as the nation's capital," explains Otto Ferdinand Wachs, 42, the Volkswagen executive in charge of Autostadt. But the company is also seeking ways to "strengthen the relationship between the auto producer and the final customer," according to Wachs, a regal-looking former public- relations executive at the company who favors shirts with French cuffs. "It will be a unique mixture of communication, product information, and fun--fun is one of our biggest factors."

Inside the completed office building that will eventually serve as Autostadt's administration and support building, Rouse and Wachs stand over a seven-by-eight-foot architectural model of Autostadt, populated by tiny plastic people who cross bridges stretching over bright-turquoise water. "There's nothing magical about going to a car dealership," says Rouse, a Montana native who taught opera and musical theater before getting into the theme-park business in the early 1970s. "This will have a much more emotional context. This is Bethlehem. This is Mecca. This is where the cars come from."

Although those kinds of pronouncements may seem a tad overheated to the uninitiated, true Volkswagen fans have always regarded a visit to Wolfsburg as something of a pilgrimage. Wachs says that group tours of the factory are typically filled up six months ahead of time, and the pre-Autostadt Volkswagen museum is a popular stop. Autostadt will play to that audience while also seeking ways to recruit new Volkswagen enthusiasts.

The formal planning for Autostadt began in the spring of 1996, and construction started in May 1998. By the fall of last year, the pedestrian bridge from the Wolfsburg train station over the Mittelland Canal was nearly complete, leading to the Piazza, the main entrance to Autostadt. Workers were installing tall, transparent, winglike panels that would let the Piazza be open to the elements on temperate days and closed off from them otherwise. The high ceilings gave the Piazza a hangarlike feeling. "Everything's designed to be open and welcoming," Rouse explains.

Near the Piazza is the new home of the car museum, which will include Fords, bmws, and Mercedes-Benzes, in addition to vintage vehicles made by the Volkswagen Group. Between the museum and the delivery center, at the far end of the property--marked by those two glass cylinders--is a series of pavilions dedicated to the various Volkswagen brands. "These aren't car showrooms," Wachs says. "They're more like embassies, and they'll all be very different. The feeling of Skoda in Czechoslovakia is different from Bentley in Great Britain. When you go to the Bentley building, you'll be able to see, hear, and smell the British countryside."

Elsewhere, visitors will be able to try driving simulators; take part in interactive exhibits that, for example, reproduce the experience of cruising down California's oceanside Highway 1; and watch movies in Europe's first high-definition 360-degree cinema. Rouse says the average visitor will spend four to six hours at Autostadt. Wachs expects that about half of the visitors will come as casual guests, and the other half will take delivery of a new Volkswagen. (Other makes won't be available for pickup in Wolfsburg; Audi, though, has its own pickup center in Ingolstadt, Germany, designed by the same architects working on Autostadt.)

At the far eastern end of the park is the CustomerCenter?. Even with raw concrete floors, the building has a palatial feel, with a wide, shallow set of stairs leading up to the main level. This is where Volkswagen buyers will pick up their fresh-from-the-factory cars, as many as a thousand a day. The cars will be stored, like gum balls, in two glass cylinders that will appear to float atop a pond nearby. A system of underground tunnels and conveyors will transport the cars from the glass towers to the CustomerCenter?, where Volkswagen employees, trained in customer service through a partnership with the Ritz-Carlton, will orient the drivers to their vehicles. "There will be a lot of excitement surrounding it," says Wachs. "Like Christmas." Simulators at the CustomerCenter? will offer drivers the chance to test their new vehicles in extreme conditions, such as ice, snow, hard rain, and a hot desert environment.

Volkswagen doesn't intend for Autostadt to cut its dealers out of the picture; like the other automakers, it acknowledges their importance in maintaining healthy customer relationships, especially after-sale service. "In our industry, we need the dealers, so that every customer can have a direct agent, a person to talk to," Wachs explains. Two floors of the CustomerCenter?, in fact, will be dedicated to training salespeople employed by Volkswagen dealerships. In Wach's view, Autostadt "will support our dealers in creating an image and by giving information about the assembly process. It is a huge place for information about our brands."

Eventually, Wachs hopes that visitors to Autostadt will be able to order Volkswagens directly from the CustomerCenter?, using a phone or computer that will connect them to a dealership in their area. But he and Rouse insist that their new park won't be about the hard sell. "This isn't about, 'Come here, buddy, let me sell you a car,' " Rouse says. Instead, by creating an immersive theme-park experience, Rouse believes that some guests will want a T-shirt or a key chain to remember their visit. Others will want a Jetta.

When it opens in June, Autostadt will fit into a larger strategy at the Volkswagen Group to offer consumers more opportunities to interact directly with the company, rather than through intermediaries like Web sites or even dealerships. Last summer, Volkswagen of America held its first-ever "DriversFest?" to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Beetle imported to the States. The DriversFest? was a daylong party at Jones Beach State Park on Long Island, complete with live music, vintage vws, food, and the chance to test-drive the newest cars. Organizer Sue Wogan, 37, Volkswagen of America's team leader for owner communications, expects it to become an annual event.

About six months after Autostadt opens its gates, Volkswagen will inaugurate a factory in Dresden, Germany for its new, as-yet-unnamed luxury model. Architect Gunter Henn calls the factory the Crystal Palace, because of its extensive use of glass; car buyers will be able to gaze at the assembly line as their vehicle is put together. The factory in Dresden will also have a gallery, a cinema, and a driving simulator. "What we are doing in Wolfsburg and in Dresden is very different from an Orlando theme-park experience," says Henn, 52, who runs one of Germany's largest architecture firms, with offices in such cities as Berlin and Munich. "These are authentic locations, not just an isolated theme park. Every day at Wolfsburg, close to 50,000 employees make about 3,000 cars. You're opening that to the public, and to the town of Wolfsburg, and that helps you open communication with the customer. It helps you make a connection between the company and the market."

Henn believes that the Internet, though powerful as a tool for delivering information and managing transactions, is limited when it comes to forging connections. "The solution is a combination of the Internet and in-person experiences," he says. "I like to visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York on the Internet, but I still want to go there and have an experience with many people. That will be the main experience at Autostadt--to meet other people who think or feel as you do. It's an agora of the Greek days. The buildings at Autostadt are tools to create that opportunity." http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/31/collision.html

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