Memories
Stepping back in time:
It was only a short year ago on July 10 when the curtain was drawn on one of the most iconic cars of all time.
The final Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line in Puebla, Mexico. This final vehicle didn’t go to a collector – it instead was taken to a museum to be admired for generations to come.
It is a fitting way to remember the Beetle. The vehicle was designed in Germany by sports car creator Ferdinand Porsche in the 1930s.
At the time, the motor car was a purchase reserved for the world’s elites – ordinary workers were priced out of owning expensive vehicles. Porsche dreamt of designing a motor vehicle that could be owned by the ordinary working man – and the engineer had an unlikely ally in Germany’s leader.
Adolf Hitler told Porsche to design a four-seater car that could reach 62mph and operate in Germany’s colder regions. It would be built under the Volkswagen banner – a name which means People’s Car in German. Two years later the prototype arrived, looking almost identical to the classic Beetle we know and love.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Volkswagen engineers converted the Beetle – and it was encountered by Allied forces in North Africa as a German version of a Jeep.
The Wolfsburg factory which produced the Beetle was repeatedly bombed during the war and, following its conclusion, struggled to reopen in the debris of post-wwii Germany. There was no roof meaning production could only take place, among the fallen masonry and wrecked machinery, on sunny days.
Control of the factory fell to Britain after the war and the government at the time thought the facility was a burden – the Beetle was a substandard car and any effort to continue production was a wasted one. It tried to hand the factory over but US producer Ford wasn’t interested either. With scepticism over how attractive a car built by the Nazi regime would be, the Beetle looked doomed. The German state took over production and, counter to expectation, it began to sell widely. It caught on around the globe and, by 1953, half a million Beetles had been sold.
Two years later, the firm had ramped up production and a million vehicles had been built. The ’60s saw the Beetle become even more popular – advertising campaigns which showed the car with the caption “Lemon” underneath gripped consumers.
The advert seemed to be saying the car was bad – or a lemon – but the text beneath explained. Engineers rigorously inspected each Beetle, ensuring there were no flaws. “We pluck the lemons, so you get the plums,” it claimed.
By 1972, the 15,007,034th Beetle was built – making it the most produced car in history. By the late ’70s, however, competition and changing tastes meant its popularity had begun to fade. Sales stopped in the US in 1979, but production continued in South Africa and South America. The last Beetle was applauded off the assembly line – serenaded by a mariachi band!