end of road for Volkswagen Beetle
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – Volkswagen stops production of the latest version of the Beetle model this week at the Puebla, Mexico factory. It is the end of the road for a vehicle that has symbolized many things over a story spanning the eight decades since 1938.
It has been: part of Germany's darkest hours as an unrealized Nazi prestige project. A symbol of Germany's post-war renaissance and rising middle-class prosperity. An example of globalization, sold and recognized worldwide. A symbol of the 1960s counter-culture in the United States. Above all, the car remains a landmark in design, as recognizable as the Coca-Cola bottle.
The car's original design ̵[ads1]1; a rounded silhouette with room for four or five almost vertically front and the air-cooled engine behind – can be traced back to the Austrian engineer Ferdinand Porsche, who was hired to fulfill the German dictator Adolf Hitler's project for a " people's car "which would spread automatic ownership as Ford Model T had in the United States
Aspects of car drilling similar to the Tatra T97, made in Czechoslovakia in 1937, and to sketches by Hungarian engineer Bela Barenyi, published in 1934. Mass production of it Called KdF-Wagen, based on the aquarium of the Nazi organization under whose auspices it was to be sold, was canceled due to World War II. Instead, the massive new factory discovered what was then rural east of Hanover, military vehicles, that used forced labor from all over Europe under miserable conditions.
Launched as a civil car manufacturer under the supervision of the British professional authorities, the Volkswagen Factory was transferred in 1949 to Germany and Lower Saxony, which still owns part of the company. In 1955, one millionth Beetle – officially called type 1 – had rolled off the assembly line in what was now the city of Wolfsburg.
The United States became Volkswagen's main single foreign market, peaking at 563,522 cars in 1968, or 40% of production. Unconventional, sometimes humorous advertising from the agency Doyle Dane Bernbach encouraged car buyers to "think little."
"Unlike in West Germany, where the low price, quality and durability represented a new post-war morality, in the United States, Beetle's properties have lent it to a deeply unconventional air in a car culture dominated by size and showmanship," wrote Bernhard Rieger in his story in 2013, "People's Car."
The production in Wolfsburg ended in 1978 as newer front-drive models that the Gulf took over. But Beetle was not dead yet. Production took place in Mexico from 1967 to 2003 – longer than the car was made in Germany. The nickname "vochito", the car made itself at home as a robust, Mexican-made "carro del pueblo."
The New Beetle – a brand new retro version built on a modified Golf platform – arose from some of the old Beetle's sweet, unconventional aura in 1998 under CEO Ferdinand Piech, grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. In 2012, Beetle's design was made a little slimmer. The latest of 5,961 Final Edition versions are headed for a museum after ceremonies in Puebla on July 10 to mark the end of production.
