The Volkswagen Beetle is kind of British

Tuesday, 22 October 2019

From the original Type 1 to the retro-modern New Beetle - it's the end of the road for Volkswagen's iconic car.

Who doesn't love the round, cute and oh-so-quirky Volkswagen Beetle?

Me, actually. And probably anybody else with an ounce of enthusiasm for cars and driving who's had to endure one as day-to-day transport. It wasn't mine, more of a family thing. Better than walking… probably. I'd have to think about it.

But it's an icon all the same and this has been a big year for the Beetle.

You can't get any more original than this original Beetle. Like, the first one.

For a start, production of the Beetle ended this year. For good. So 2020 will be the first year that that there hasn't been a Beetle being made since 1945.

**READ MORE:

The Mansplainer: not really part of the Beet generation.

* Don't mourn the VW Beetle

* Seventy years since Britain gave Beetle back

Later Beetle worked better as a fashion statement than a car.

* End of the road for the Beetle

* EV power for old Beetle**

That kind of glosses over the fact that the real (rear-engined) Beetle finished production in Germany in 1978 and Mexico in 2003.

In its place came a front-drive car based on the Golf that looked like a Beetle but wasn't really. But it was called a Beetle, so I guess it counts. It wasn't hideous to drive like the original, just a bit boring and cynical once you looked beyond the cartoon styling.

Fun fact: the very last model (launched in 2012) was the first one ever to actually have a 'Beetle' badge on it.

But 2019 also marks 70 years since Britain gave the Beetle back to Germany. Which is really important because without the British, we would never have had the car that everybody thinks is so very German.

Following the Second World War, the British military took over the Volkswagenwerkplant in Wolfsburg. An engineer, Senior Resident Officer Major Ivan Hirst, was fascinated by the little car that had been built there for a short time, before the facility was given over to machines of destruction.

He reckoned it was ideal to replace vehicles damaged during the war and did a big pitch to his bosses. They signed an order for 20,000 examples of the 'People's Car' (it was never actually called the Beetle) complete with towbars - but only after the factory had also made 500 vans and 700 trailers.

So the British Military Government was able to get Wolfsburg moving again very quickly thanks to the Beetle. And when the factory was handed back to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, VW had a massive head-start towards becoming the carmaking giant we all know today.