[bren]

these two posts have just appeared on a UK vw forum discussing this very subject... i believe the latter is true, as the "low-e-nuf" club was talking about the style in the early 90's while the germans were just doing it, and not attaching a label to the "look" ....
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Phil Slade:

I gotta put in my 5p's worth on this style guide thing. The term German Look was made up hear in the VolksWorld office!! It was one of the sections in my PhotoTrolley!!! After printing this 'Look' a few times we even had the guys at VW Speed magazine in Germany ring up asking us what this German Look was as they were German and had never heard of it!! The same kind of goes for Euro and Even French look!!
As Paul said we are not dictators, we just want to help put people on the right track, we are not always right and never claim to be, hence the term "guide"
We luckley get to go to shows al over Europe and see more pictures of cars than most people so i personally think we are more than within our rights to say what 'Style ' peoples cars are.
But saying all this they are guides, you dont have to follow them, hay we would love to see people doing different things but certain things work and certain things don't. We all know that.

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Moog:

Phil,
so the fact that back in the early '90s when you and I were both part of Lo'E'Nuf, when Ginga and I were advocating this look in the Lo'E'Nuf club magazine (as an antidote to all the copy-cat Cal Lookers in the club) doesn't count then?
I'm not claiming to have invented the term - far from it. Ginga and I earlier referred to it as the "Deutsch-look" in the club-mag, until Mike Frison, the 6ft6 German skinhead-nutter with the Olive Green late model bug reffered to it as the "German-Look" and the term stuck. That was in late '92/early '93.

VolksWorld and yourself can take great credit for spreading the word about the German-look in the last few years, and i applaud this as it is a style i prefer, but please do not take credit for inventing the term when you joined the magazine several years later.
If i have got the wrong end of the stick and the term was coined by VolksWorld much earlier then you have my apologies, but your comment above makes it sound like you invented the term.
Moog.
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interesting stuff eh?! a member of volksworlds editorial staff taking credit, but an old friend putting himj right... so who knows? all i know is that i had seen pictures of cars in european mags in a style that would now be known as german look long before volksworld even coined the phrase... ive got an issue of the french superVW mag from '91 with a couple of GL's in it, but not a single use of the term mentioned...