When people talk about the Volkswagen they automatically think of the VW Beetle. Not that the Volkswagen got its entirely appropriate nickname at home in Germany, as one might think, but in its second home, the USA.
Here, the Beetle succeeded where many foreign competitors failed: it got accepted. Without reservation. Here the strange beast "made in Germany" immediately made lots of friends. In the USA, the land of (almost) endless possibilities, there also sprang up a whole series of, in part, decidedly bizarre Beetle stylings, "special bugs" & other curiosities.
Even today the Beetle is still popular with many Americans, despite the fact that this veteran has not been imported into the USA as a new car since 1977. The reason behind this is the stiffer safety emission regulations.
In the homeland of the Beetle, the Federal Republic of Germany, the situation is now similar. Over a million Beetles are still driving on Germany's roads. Despite falling registrations, it is still one of the most popular and best loved cars of all.
When on 15th May 1981 in the Volkswagen branch factory at Peubla, in Mexico, some 120 kilometres east of the capital Mexico City, the twenty millionth Beetle came off the line, this was an all-time record in the history of the automobile and one which is unlikely ever to be broken. Even Henry Ford's best selling Model T, the Tin Lizzie, "only" managed fifteen million examples during its production life of just under twenty years.
Technically, the veteran Beetle, despite all attempts at updating, must be regarded as old-fashioned, and, compared with the modern Volkswagen designs, completely outdated and no longer competitive. What remains is the legend of the everlasting Beetle. Only dyed-in-the-wool Beetle enthusiasts, of which there are still quite a few, keep faith with the omnipresent animal.
The reasons for the global success of the Beetle can be found simply and solely in its conception, production fifty years ago by Ferdinand Porsche. Furthermore, the Beetle owes survival to its patent qualities: solid workmanship, good equipment and, above all, its proverbial reliability - it runs and runs and runs. . . .
Additional reasons for the Beetle phenomenon are doubtless its low purchase price and high resale value even after years of use. And a Beetle is low on maintenance costs, especially for repairs.
Nor was the Beetle ever misused as a status symbol. There is no such thing, according to an analysis of the office of statistics of the US automotive industry, as a typical Beetle driver. They cannot, as a result, be put into any kind of convenient pigeon-hole. The Beetle is a classless automobile in a class-conscious society.
This study carried out in the sixties is still perfectly valid. The US magazine LIFE put it like this: "A VW is a member of the family that just happens to live in the garage."
Maybe exaggerated, but a nonetheless designation of the well-loved Beetle. When over fifty years ago Ferdinand Porsche started on the development work for a people's car, he could not, of course, foresee that he was laying the foundation stone of the most successful and perhaps best- loved automobile of all.
Of the 5,115 components which go to make up a complete Beetle, only one has remained unchanged throughout its years of maturity: the clamping strip for the bonnet seal.
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