"Walter's Story" is the most singularly peculiar of a series of ads that ran on UK television in the late 1990s, showcasing the array of anal retentive German weirdos (supposedly) responsible for bringing the VW Passat to fruition. The campaign tagline assured us that the Passat was "a car born out of obsession", with each ad giving us a portrait of the assorted perfectionists who'd endeavored to give the world the exemplary driving experience. Each was an individual in their particular fixation, a running feature of the ads being a close-up of their worker ID tag, to specify their esteemed place within the company process. In some cases, there was an endearing air of genius to the obsessiveness (see that one ad with qualitatskontrolle expert P. Fischer, the man determined to engineer just the most sonically pleasing effect when you shut your Passat door). "Walter's Story", has a sadder, more sinister quality in a way that seemingly anticipates the found footage boom that was all set to take horror cinema by storm with the impending release of The Last Broadcast and The Blair Witch Project. This ad is keenly aware of the camera's function as a grotesquely intimate confessional and a device that, far from passively recording reality, actively obscures and distorts it.
Meet W.I. Froegel, aka Walter, our resident Detail Meister. His ad takes the form of a video diary, documenting his journey from 20th October 1994 to 14th February 1996; within that span of 16 months he's able to perfect a number of ancillary details, including the car's pump-adjustable seats and fan-shaped water jets that help reduce the weight of the car. On the surface, his fastidious monologue offers a playful means of listing off the Passat's various mundane perks. It is, however, a notch more narrative-driven than others in the series, since it's effectively telling two stories at once. There's an underlying narrative thread that is, as it turns out, being literally overridden by the one we see, but which still makes itself known throughout and emerges especially plaintively at the end. Walter's titular story is not simply a document of how he went through all of the Passat's tinniest features with a meticulously fine comb, but of how he destroyed his marriage in the process. At least, we're given enough information to arrive at that conclusion, but it exists largely within the cracks of the ad.
We get only a fleeting glimpse of Walter's presumed spouse, in a single entry of his video diary. Walter is in what appears to be his own living room, talking to the camera about what a wonderful innovation the fan-shaped water jets are, when she sneaks up behind him in a dressing gown and is visibly annoyed to find him blathering into the void about that infernal car. This is our first direct clue of the tensions arising from the overspilling of Walter's work life into his domestic life. It takes on sharper significance at the end, as Walter is being applauded for his achievements by his fellow technicians, and his ostensibly triumphant image is suddenly swallowed up by a barrage of VHS lines, to reveal the butchered remains of the recording he was taping over all the while - a family wedding that took place in the decade prior, on 16th August 1985. His own wedding, I presume? There are certainly enough seedy details in the subtext of the ad that point us to that conclusion - the sequence in which he demonstrates his pump-adjustable seats feels eerily evocative of a beak-seat make-out session, and it's likely not a coincidence that Walter's final recording takes place on Valentine's Day. Walter's interests have clearly moved on, the car he's played a crucial role in birthing having replaced his wife in his affections. The blissful promises from that summer of 1985 lie now lie in ruins; what remains haunts Walter's present-day obsessions like a ghost, undermining whatever triumph could be gleaned from within. The chapel bells in the wedding video seem to actively counteract his colleagues clapping - no longer the sounds of joyful celebration, they become a mournful ode to what was abandoned en route to the Passats's being.
Which is really a bit weird as a selling point for the Passat, is it not? True, it wouldn't be the first time Volkswagen used a relationship in unsettling peril to promote one of their models, and I've no doubt that it was all intended as an elaborate joke, the wedding video being the final punchline in illustrating the full ludicrous extent of Walter's fixations. But with that as our closing image, it all feels rather poignant, almost as if the ad is conceding that it it couldn't have commanded such unrelenting obsession without breaking a few hearts on the side. It's notable that, while the campaign obviously wants to present the Passat's creation as a worthwhile endeavor, Walter himself is portrayed as a broadly ridiculous figure throughout. At best, you can say that he has the enthusiasm of a small child at play, most prominently seen in the sequence in which he's fiddling repeatedly with the locks (a shorter version of the ad existed comprising only this sequence, allowing Walter's kiddish indulgence to stand as a self-contained thing). But there is an uglier side to his kid-like demeanour, a self-absorption that's totally averse to any form of intrusion from the outside world. Walter is, above all, depicted as foolish, his self-importance persistently undercut by the hustle and bustle unfolding around him - his introductory recording climaxes with him having to shout down his colleagues, while another entry has him totally inaudible. So long as he can hear the sound of his own voice, he seems oblivious to whatever is behind him, both directly and temporally - at the end of his diary, as he stands there smirking like an idiot while clutching that headlight as though at an award ceremony, one wonders if he's even noticed that his marriage has been disintegrating around him. But then the final status of Walter's relationship, while doubtlessly not rosy, is never revealed. It is an unknown piece of the narrative puzzle that lurks tauntingly within the blank space of those ominous VHS flickers. What we're left with is a series of images that force us to get uncomfortably up close and personal with Walter, immersing us in the overwhelming awkwardness of his Passat-dominated world. We come away grateful that we don't know the Detail Meister, even if we do feel a lingering curiousity about the car on which he was working. Obsession, the ad illustrates, can be an ugly and merciless thing, yet the campaign hinges on the notion that it delivers the goods nevertheless. Obsession fuels the drive for making those little details function - even if we do end, hauntingly, by giving the final word to the bigger picture bypassed along the way.
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