Once the world's most popular and charismatic car, driving the counter-culture and starring in movies, the Beetle is no more. As the last model heads for the museum, Shane Hegarty pays tribute.
It is just a car. One that gives a bumpy, noisy ride and that is not the most handsome thing ever to drive off an assembly line. It is also a pollutant. Its pedigree is questionable. And, as every schoolchild knows, it was all Adolf Hitler's idea. He wanted a car built that would accommodate two adults and three children, with the added stipulation that it also have room to hold three soldiers, a machine-gun and its ammunition.
It is, though, more than just a car. There can be no other collection of cogs and carburettors that has attracted such a degree of anthropomorphism. Its owners give it names, and nations give it nicknames. It was christened the KdF-wagen, after Hitler's motto "Kraft durch Freude" ("Joy Through Strength"). It didn't stick. In Italy they build up its confidence by calling it "Maggiolino", which means prettiest. In Brazil they call it "the belly button" because everybody has one. It was the Germans who first called it the Beetle.
It is a car with such charisma that it starred in movies. The Mini had one great stunt sequence, but the Beetle had its own franchise. Some 200 vehicles combined to star as Herbie, and over the course of seven movies and a television series he won Grand Prix, thwarted jewel thieves, fell in love with a sporty Lancia and out-acted Stephanie Powers.
Meanwhile, there have been real-life tales of adventure and derring-do. A Beetle on show at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum served as an escape route through the Berlin Wall for several people who hid in its modified bonnet. During the 1960s, a man called Malcolm Buchanan sailed the Irish Sea in one, journeying the 59 kilometres from the Isle of Man to Cumberland in less than eight hours.
In Mexico, drivers insist that the Beetle is hermetically airtight, so that when the floods come it floats through the streets, past other stalled and drowning vehicles.
Most of all, Hitler's utilitarian dream become an icon of American hippie culture, the brainchild of a totalitarian adopted by the free spirits of the 1960s. It became the wagon that drove counter-culture for several reasons. Its quirky design was seen as the antithesis of the aggressive models pouring out of factories during the 1960s. It was cheap but durable, ideal as a first car. You didn't need to know much about the nuts and bolts of a car engine to keep a Beetle on the road. Most importantly, it was in the right place at the right time. It was a popular car among the youth just as they were rising up and needed something to get them there.
It was not quite the context in which Hitler had wanted the Beetle to succeed, yet it had fulfilled its mission. He had wanted to create a autobahn network and a family car for the Aryan race to cruise on it. It had to be available to every worker for the low, low cost of 1,000 Reichmarks (€120). The challenge was taken up by Dr Ferdinand Porsche, a man with similar ideas for an economy car but who would become more famous for a vehicle that was anything but. The Beetle was the third prototype, with a round body and an air-cooled engine to the rear so that the driveshaft was shorter.
Hitler laid the foundation stone of the Volkswagen factory near Hanover in 1938, and had a town, later named Wolfsburg, built especially for its workers. At the outbreak of war, though, all factories were commandeered for military use, and plans for mass-production were shelved after only a few hundred cars had been built. They were given to Nazi party officials and Der Führer took one for himself. Hitler made his last journey in a Beetle, from a Berlin airfield to his bunker in January 1945.
Bombed during the second World War, the factory was rebuilt under British occupation, and production resumed before being handed back to the Germans in 1948. It was an immediate success, and produced its millionth model in 1955.
Volkswagen began to build Beetles overseas and tinkered with the specs, but not the basic look. The top speed rose to 85 miles per hour. Room was made on the dashboard for a radio and a fuel gauge replaced the reserve fuel tank (previously, the driver had no idea how much fuel was left until it ran out). He would kick a lever on the floor to switch to the small amount of reserve fuel, and hope there was a petrol station nearby.
On February 17th, 1972, the 15,007,034th Beetle rolled off an assembly line at Wolfsburg, and it overtook the Ford Model T as the most popular car in the world. Ford, though, suddenly revised its original figures upwards, proclaiming that it had actually sold 16.5 million Model Ts, so it was 1973 by the time the Beetle caught up again and could claim the title. In total, more than 21.5 million cars have been sold, but the Beetle is no longer the world's most popular car. That honour is now held by the Toyota Corolla, about which no movies have been made.
By the mid-1970s, though, the Beetle was in decline. The small car market was expanding, with the Volkswagen Golf proving more popular than its older sibling.
The oil crisis, economic recession and the environmental movement affected sales, and following the introduction of tougher anti-pollution laws, production of the car ceased in the US and Europe. There hasn't been a Beetle built in Germany since January 19th, 1978.
South America welcomed it just as the rest of the world lost interest. In Mexico, it is the chosen car of the cab driver and there are still 500,000 on the road there. Even there, though, sales have dropped following an influx of cheap imports. The Mexican government would prefer if the Beetle was to disappear from the roads of its heavily polluted cities.
It has also developed an unsavoury reputation as a kidnapping liability. Kidnappers and street robbers can easily block off the two doors, making it very difficult for passengers to escape.
The 21st-century version of the Beetle - which will continue production - was built as one last attempt by Volkswagen to crack a resistant American market. It worked.
By the 1990s, a nostalgia-driven black market in classic Beetles had emerged in the US, with $15,000 cars selling for $50,000. Critically and commercially popular as it is, many aficionados see the New Beetle as a homage rather than as a direct descendant. Its chassis suggests a modernised Beetle, but technically it has more in keeping with the Golf.
The last mass-produced classic Beetle was built in Pueblo, Mexico on July 10th. The factory then built 3,000 special-edition versions of the car, until just after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, when the 21,529,464th and last classic Beetle drove off the line to the accompaniment of a mariachi band. It will be sent to the Beetle's birthplace, the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, where it will be cooped up while the rest of its siblings spend many more years zipping about the world in the hands of loving owners.