Collision Course

"It's obvious to us that all these things are going to happen," Kanai says, after the sneaker meeting is over. "We're trying to make sure others in the company think it's obvious too. The challenges here are cheerleading, rallying, educating."

It's hard work, Kanai admits, "feeling like you have to drag a big company into the Internet Age." At any given time, the group consults on several projects and presents at an unending series of company meetings and off-sites. And the group will sometimes invite itself along, as when the parent company was planning a meeting in Japan to articulate a global Web strategy. "We went to Japan because the United States knows more about the Web," Dames says matter-of-factly. "It was important for us to be there." That kind of chutzpah wouldn't work for just anybody in the organization. "Personal relationships are really important," Kanai says. Buurman agrees: "You've gotta have angels."

Early signs indicate that the team's efforts are paying off. After My Car Universe debuted, Toyota execs began talking about the possibilities of Internet technology in their vehicles. Last summer, the company's scattered Web groups were organized into a single Office of the Web, reporting up to a senior vice president and board member; the electronic-commerce strategy team became the Innovations Team, the only one of five teams in the Office of the Web with global sway. (Dames & Co. kept their unorthodox titles.) And the company has abandoned its fearful stance on e-commerce; talk to anyone at Toyota today, and you'll hear that e-commerce doesn't necessarily mean selling cars directly to consumers -- the more significant piece is business-to-business.

"The rest of the company used to be Internet skeptics, and now, for the most part, they're believers," Dames says. "But we're not looking for a pat on the back. The thing that makes us happy now is hearing the things that we've been whispering in people's ears all this time circle back to us."

Volkswagen Gets Physical (and Emotional)

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."

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.