Wahl & Söhne
With a fleet of around 400 buses and coaches, Wahl was believed to have become the largest privately owned bus company in Europe.
[4] On 6 August 1926 two brothers, Wilhelm (1903–1969) and Albert Wahl (1901–1976), set up a bus service between Heidenheim and nearby Schnaitheim.
In a region where punctuality is highly valued, the Wahl buses were scheduled to depart just slightly earlier than the corresponding postbus services.
During the 1930s Wahl sought to compete with the railways, not simply locally along the Brenz valley, but further afield, offering direct travel to Stuttgart via Weißenstein and Göppingen at prices which significantly undercut those of the national rail company.
In order to work around the prohibition the buses stopped short of central Stuttgart at suburbs such as Cannstatt or Untertürkheim from where passengers could complete their journeys by tram.
Six years later, in 1953, the municipality's public bus company was dissolved and its routes were taken over by Wahl and the national postbus operator.
By this time the economy of what had become, in May 1949, the German Federal Republic (West Germany), was growing strongly and disposable incomes were increasing to a point where many people could contemplate foreign holidays.
In Heidenheim a 30-minute frequency was introduced for the city buses, and additional suburbs such as Erbisberg and Mittelrain were added to the local network.
[6] Various high-profile celebrities, including Prince Johannes of Thurn und Taxis, a Kashoggi heir and the widow of a former Mexican president, were guests at the "dream wedding" ceremony.
[7] However, the marriage ended two years later, formally in 1985, and Reynolds would assert his notability not as a bus and coach operator, but as a movie actor and anti-tobacco activist.
Dr. Wahl was never shy of publicity, and the regional minister-president, Lothar Späth was present for the signing of one particularly large contract, for the sale of 500 buses in China.
The public bus network had been ringing up deficits for the years, while the tourist coach business was highly cyclical, and vulnerable to exchange rate fluctuations.
The company structure, in practice, gave the chief executive and owner almost unconstrained freedom to run his business as he saw fit, and when he ran into cash flow difficulties he adopted what he would later identify as "emergency measures" ("Notmaßnahmen").
Two investigative journalists, Oliver Schröm and Stefan Scheytt, made their way to Mexico City, hoping to be able to interview Wahl in his jail cell.
[4] As matters turned out, at the time when he was found in Mexico Dr Wahl still had not sold on all his unpaid for buses, nor handed them over to the banks who had accepted them as security on debts.
