Is the VW Beetle Dead?
This iconic little vehicle has come back from the dead twice already but that doesn’t necessarily mean goodbye. Recently, a senior Volkswagen official suggested that no one should "never say never" when it comes to eventually bring the Beetle back to life for the third time.
At Service King Southside in San Antonio, TX it’s tough to say farewell to the amazing VW Beetle, a car that has been a big part of American life for many years.
Designed by the well-known Austrian car engineer Ferdinand Porsche — who would later establish his own sports car company — the Beetle was initially produced back in 1938. By 1972, the car’s production had topped $15 million, surpassing demand for Henry Ford's long-lived and heralded Model T.
In recent years, VW has tried more than a few times to revive demand with a series of new versions of the Beetle. Unfortunately, it was an era when SUVs and CUVs were replacing sedans and coupes to the wrong side of the road. When sales started to slump, the decision to discontinue production unavoidably.
Until it became successful, and in order to test the market, the initial run of Beetles was strictly limited. The very first Beetle rolled out of the newly built VW plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, just several months before the opening shots of WW II. The factory was rapidly converted to military production and, by the time the guns fell completely silent, the Allies had bombed it into total rubble.
That probably marked the end of a very abbreviated history were it not for spunky British Army Major Ivan Hirst, who was directly assigned to reinitiate German auto manufacturing. He found one vehicle that somehow survived the bombing and decided to put it back into immediate production. A few years later, the very first of the newly reborn Beetles were shipped to the United States and a big hit with buyers tired of the large vehicles that Detroit was producing during that period.
American counterculture helped to make the Beetle a huge hit, transforming Hitler's people's car into a very groovy hippie-mobile, along with the Volkswagen Microbus. At its highest peak, the German carmaker sold more than 400,000 Beetles annually in the United States, capturing as much as a 5% share of the American market, and $1.3 million worldwide.
Twenty years later, production had reached an incredible 21 million, even though the Beetle was already declining rapidly. By then, it was literally an afterthought for VW, which was rolling out an ever-broader mixture of products, including the sporty Golf model that had largely displaced the Beetle.
By 2003, with global sales dropping to 30,000, VW pulled the plug after 65 years of auto production. But the nameplate was quickly revived, with the carmaker bowing to fans by revealing the "Brand New Beetle," the first complete makeover of the vehicle.
Volkswagen tried to give it one more final shot, introducing a third-generation model back in 2011 that addressed complaints concerning the New Beetle's stubby nose and uncomfortable interior. The remake got a boost when, on November 22, 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced on her TV show she was giving a third-generation Beetle to everyone in her studio audience.
But, that didn’t seem to save the Beetle--for now.
Service King Southside in San Antonio, TX 78221
Sources: CNN and Los Angeles Times
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