Frankfurt – From Nazis To Hippies: End Of The Road For Volkswagen Beetle

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    FILE - In this April 27, 1966 file photo, Volkswagen workers drive their Beetle cars from the parking lot on their way home at the end of a days work at the world's largest single auto plant, the Volkswagen factory (seen in background) in Wolfsburg, Germany. (AP Photo, file)Frankfurt – Volkswagen is halting production of the last version of its Beetle model this week at its plant in Puebla, Mexico. It’s the end of the road for a vehicle that has symbolized many things over a history spanning the eight decades since 1938.

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    It has been: a part of Germany’s darkest hours as a never-realized Nazi prestige project. A symbol of Germany’s postwar economic renaissance and rising middle-class prosperity. An example of globalization, sold and recognized all over the world. An emblem of the 1960s counterculture 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 — a rounded silhouette with seating for four or five, nearly vertical windshield and the air-cooled engine in the rear — can be traced back to Austrian engineer Ferdinand Porsche, who was hired to fulfill German dictator Adolf Hitler’s project for a “people’s car” that would spread auto ownership the way the Ford Model T had in the U.S.

    Aspects of the car bore similarities to the Tatra T97, made in Czechoslovakia in 1937, and to sketches by Hungarian engineer Bela Barenyi published in 1934. Mass production of what was called the KdF-Wagen, based on the acronym of the Nazi labor organization under whose auspices it was to be sold, was cancelled due to World War II. Instead, the massive new plant in what was then countryside east of Hanover turned out military vehicles, using forced laborers from all over Europe under miserable conditions.

    Re-launched as a civilian carmaker under supervision of the British occupation authorities, the Volkswagen factory was transferred in 1949 to the Germany government and the state of Lower Saxony, which still owns part of the company. By 1955, the one millionth Beetle – officially called the Type 1 – had rolled off the assembly line in what was now the town of Wolfsburg.

    The United States became Volkswagen’s most important foreign market, peaking at 563,522 cars in 1968, or 40% of production. Unconventional, sometimes humorous advertising from agency Doyle Dane Bernbach urged car buyers to “Think small.”
    FILE - In this April 21, 2017 file photo, Volkswagen Beetles are displayed during the annual gathering of the "Beetle club" in Yakum, central Israel. The Israeli Beetle club was founded in 2001 and there are 500 members. Volkswagen is halting production of the last version of its Beetle model in July 2019 at its plant in Puebla, Mexico, the end of the road for a vehicle that has symbolized many things over a history spanning eight decades since 1938.(AP Photo/Oded Balilty, file)
    “Unlike in West Germany, where its low price, quality and durability stood for a new postwar normality, in the United States the Beetle’s characteristics lent it a profoundly unconventional air in a car culture dominated by size and showmanship,” wrote Bernhard Rieger in his 2013 history, “The People’s Car.”

    Production at Wolfsburg ended in 1978 as newer front drive models like the Golf took over. But the Beetle wasn’t dead yet. Production went on in Mexico from 1967 until 2003 — longer than the car had been made in Germany. Nicknamed the “vochito,” the car made itself at home as a rugged, Mexican-made “carro del pueblo.”

    The New Beetle — a completely new retro version build on a modified Golf platform — resurrected some of the old Beetle’s cute, unconventional aura in 1998 under CEO Ferdinand Piech, Ferdinand Porsche’s grandson. In 2012, the Beetle’s design was made a bit sleeker. The last of 5,961 Final Edition versions is headed for a museum after ceremonies in Puebla on July 10 to mark the end of production.


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    11 Comments
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    shimonyehuda
    shimonyehuda
    4 years ago

    not the real end they will bring out a new version in a few years.

    4 years ago

    for those that know history or care at all
    Wolfsburg (the VW plant) was a concentration camp part of the camps belonging to Gross Rosen
    think about that before you lease a VW because its 10 cheaper a month than an american car

    4 years ago

    Anyone who digs even a little into some of the details of the holocaust, will be disgusted driving a VW, Benz, BMW, and Porsche – A simple Wikipedia on Mr Ferdinand Porsche will gross you out, he was Hitlers buddy, DURING the war. And today, so many of us drive with that horrific ‘Porsche’ name signed onto our cars.

    To answer comment #3, you raise a fair argument, I know many Jews hold like that, but do a little holocaust research, at least more than you did until writing that comment. Japan, is not in the same league as Germany. They didn’t kill 6 million Jews, including 2 million kids. If you are lazy, google the Auschwitz Albums and study the beautiful faces of all the people who would be gassed do death moments later.

    It’s not about Germany and the car companies today, as they may be different people (to me they’re all trash) – but why would YOU want to associate yourself with those horrific logos on a car which is so personable to many people.

    Yuch, I wouldn’t lease/own one of those cars even for free.

    4 years ago

    To:Bunim1-#5- I’ll tell you what I told another esteemed scholar on this site. You were correct; the Japanese did not kill 6,000,000. Instead, they killed over four times that number or over 25,000,000 (twenty five million), with the Pacific War of aggression which they unleashed, included millions of civilians. Jewish POWs in Japan, were treated more harshly than non-Jewish POWs. As far as doing Holocaust research, I was doing that before you were even born. Incidentally, in case you don’t realize it, the parts for even an American car, come from many different countries. Hence, if you discover that a part on an American car which you’ve purchased was made in Germany, are you going to drive that car back to the dealer, and tell him to remove that part?