The Beetle’s decline in the US was fast and brutal. In 1973, 350k Beetles and Super Beetles still found loving homes. In 1977, the last year for the Beetle sedan, it was a mere 12,090. That makes the ’77 a rare find nowadays. I found this one obviously very well loved and pampered, in the driveway of one of the nicer houses of this rather tony neighborhood. Someone really has a soft spot for the final Love Bug. It’s in like-new condition; did someone buy it in 1977 and stash it away because they knew it was a historic item? It rather looks that way.
Somewhat ironically, in the middle of the Malaise Era, this Beetle is also the most powerful one ever built, thanks to its fuel injection. At least the Beetle didn’t exit with its tail between its twin tail pipes; in fact there were no more twin tail pipes, thanks to a catalytic converter.
Imports of VWs to the US started in 1949, with exactly two units. Ben Pon, VW’s importer for the Netherlands and the father of the Type 2 (Transporter), was the one who brought those first two Beetles to New York. And he did not meet with success; he unloaded one for $800 to settle his hotel bill, and apparently sold the other one, as there’s no record of him driving it back to the Netherlands.
The next year, Max Hoffman, America’s leading import kingpin, took on the VW and sold all of 157. That’s quite an explosive growth rate, actually. But things flattened out after that; in 1953, 1,139 were sold. Undoubtedly Hoffman had more profitable fish to fry.
But in 1954, things took a big turn, as VW created its own US imports, sales and service organization, Volkswagen of America (VWoA). It was headed by a dynamo, Will van de Kamp. And that year, sales already jumped to 8,086.
In 1955, the Volkswagen phenomenon took hold. It’s hard to put one’s finger on just what caused it, but suddenly it was the hot new thing. Sales quadrupled from 1954, to 32,662. And that’s just the Beetle; bus sales started kicking in too.
From there it was onward and upwards. We covered Tom McCahill’s glowing test of a ’56 here, just last year.
And since I already covered the Beetle’s rise in the US here in my 1957 VW CC, I’ll leave off on that subject for now.
But here’s the graphic representation of the Beetle’s rise and fall in the US. And as can be seen, the fall was quite a bit steeper than the rise. Mount Volkswagen’s cliff is steep and treacherous.
Fortunately the Rabbit (Golf) arrived in 1975 to give VWoA a bit of a reprieve from the free-fall, and although total Volkswagen sales would level off, but at a much lower level than they had been at their peak in 1970. Quite a few (smart) VW dealers became Toyota dealers.
The Beetle’s venerable air-cooled boxer first designed in the mid 1930’s just couldn’t meet the ever-tightening US emission regulations with a carburetor, so in 1975, the US version of the Beetle got fuel injection. The rest of the world would putter along with the carb, although late model Mexican Beetles eventually got FI too.
Of course VW had been a pioneer in mass-market fuel injection, as starting in 1968 all US-bound Type 3s (Squareback, Fastback) had fuel injection, and subsequently FI was used on some other VW lines. But never the Beetle, until 1975. And somewhat ironically, the Rabbit didn’t get FI until 1977, so in 1975 and 1976, the Beetle had one last trump card to play.
Power increased to 48 net hp, which was up from the ’74’s 46 hp, and as high as any Beetle ever sold in the US. And of course it ran decidedly better, with crisp transitions and none of the common maladies associated with carbs during that era. Of course that was still way down on the Rabbit; by 1977, the Rabbit hit its stride, with its larger 1588 FI four now making 78 hp, and now fully living up to its name. A test we reprinted here of 1975 economy cars had the Rabbit making the hop to 60 in 12.7 sec, and the Beetle crawling to that speed in 18.1 seconds, with the 1/4 mile coming along in 20.7 seconds. Those numbers are remarkably similar to what essentially all US Beetles did over the years, as their increased power also generally came along with a bit more weight and lower (higher numerical) gearing. It’s hard to get a Beetle to hurry, unless you take certain measures.
But there was a price to be paid for the Beetle’s FI: the rear cargo/luggage area behind the rear seat was now taken up (at least in part) by the FI ECU. I was unable to find out whether the rest of the area back there is usable or not, but there’s clearly a cover over it unlike in the past.
Let’s take a closer look at this particular Beetle. It has a beautiful silver metallic paint job.
I was intrigued by the dealer sticker below the license plate. I only found one reference to it, at the VW site Samba.com.
They had a few items from Delta there, including this fine post card image from the 1960s. There’s now a “Volkswagen La Crosse”, but it seems to have moved on to more prosaic quarters. So if that dealer sticker is original, then this Beetle really does seem to be some sort of pristine time capsule.
The interior certainly looks showroom fresh. Too bad I didn’t look in the other side and get the mileage off the odometer.
It’s nice to know that one representative of the mere 12,090 Beetle sedans sold in the US in 1977 is in such good hands.
Postscript: The VW Super Beetle Cabrio, built by Karmann, was sold in the US for two more years (1978 & 1979). The last German beetle sedan rolled off the lines in January 1978. After that, Brazil and Mexico continued, with the Mexican Beetle ending its long run in 2003, after 21,529,464 Beetles built worldwide.
I know the ’75 I owned had an FI computer about the size of a modern ECU
That is an extraordinarily precipitous fall from 73 onwards. You can’t really put that sudden decline in the hands of the OPEC crisis, or can you?
I adore that rather flamboyant style of the pre-DDB marketing art.
It’s like they knew what a ’70s Beetle would look like in the ’50s
If anything, OPEC should have given the Beetle a boost, as small cars were super hot all of a sudden. So it’s ironic that it really crashed in ’74, the year the Pinto and Vega soared.
It was the Japanese that killed the Beetle. Better all-round, and much more car for the money. The Corolla swapped places with the Beetle as the best selling import. It’s days were suddenly over.
And there was a social aspect: the Beetle had been “in” for a long time, and a lot of folks bought it because of that. Suddenly it was out. Like certain pop music bands.
That artwork was done in Germany in about 1949-1950, and used by VW globally for a few years. I think ’54 may have been the last year. Then a new style took over, much more realistic.
Update: a quick check at Samba.com shows that a variation of that artistic approach lasted all the way through 1960, with the windows rounder and bigger than they actually were.
“It was the Japanese that killed the Beetle.”
When saw that chart my first thought was that it couldn’t be a coincidence that Beetle sales fell off a cliff the same year the Civic was introduced.
Its own brand new Rabbit was in-house competition as it was priced lower than the Beetle, and got way more performance and interior room in a smaller package. Not to mention, it was more practical, being a hatchback. As well, the Rabbit was also available as a four door.
The Super Beetle in coupe form had its last stand in 1975 as the La Grande.
As I recall, exchange rates were also starting to do a number on sales of less expensive cars coming from Europe. When did Opel give up and move to the Isuzu, 76 or so? If the Beetle still had the cool factor going for it, it may have been able to get by with charging a premium, but as you note those days were over.
The “Opel by Isuzu” first appeared in late 1975 as a 1976 model.
Exchange rates also helped hasten the exit of the European Ford Capri from this market.
Exchange rates had a lot to do with it, along with the modern Rabbit hitting it’s stride. Like Geeber mentioned, it was a big factor for cars coming from Germany.
When my brother was shopping for his first car in 1978, he crossed the Capri, Rabbit and Fiesta (plus several others) off of his list pretty quickly. Similar situation when my other brother was shopping for his first new car in 1980, the Rabbit was off his list, too.
The Japanese makes just really started reaching small town Midewesternia by then; I think the little town I grew up in got it’s first Honda dealership (in a nearby town) in 1978 or so. Until then, Civics were something of a novelty in our neck of the woods.
There were folks we knew who were enthusiastic early adopters of the Rabbit, trading their Beetles and other cars for them. For similar money, who wouldn’t want the modern FWD Rabbit over the nearly 40 year old Beetle?
I only knew of one person who had the fuelie Beetle. He claimed he had issues with the fuel injection system itself, but that was so long ago I have no clear recollection of what was going on. It was a neat car, but expensive for a Kaefer…
The feature car is a true time capsule. I probably haven’t seen one like that since the early 1980’s, certainly not in that condition. If you were going to have a North American Beetle, I think this would be the one. In silber.
“It was the Japanese that killed the Beetle. Better all-round, and much more car for the money. The Corolla swapped places with the Beetle as the best selling import.”
So true. I have had the opportunity over the years to ride in both a ’75 Beetle and a ’75 Corolla (both yellow with black interiors, coincidentally enough!). The Beetle, as lovable and iconic as it may have been, seemed positively ancient compared to the Corolla. In almost every way- price, performance, handling, space-the Corolla beat the bug. And best of all, perhaps, the Corolla had a heater that actually worked as intended.
I don’t think it was OPEC that caused the decline of the Beetle so much as it became increasingly difficult for VW to achieve the anti-pollution measures that were being adopted. I had a 1973 Super Beetle and the pollution controls had sucked all of the good out of the air cooled engine. It tended to idle poorly, ran rough and just felt sluggish in general. Ironically enough it wasn’t even very economical to drive, in the year or so I owned the thing it returned about 21-22 MPG in town, with highway driving moving the mileage up to 25 MPG or so. It may have been able to achieve higher mileage but I tended to treat the gas pedal as an “on/off” switch to maximize acceleration. The alternative was to get run over by an Olds 98 or Chrysler or some other road barge. The one good feature I discovered in my Beetle ownership was, thanks to OPEC, I was able to sell the car for a little more than I had paid for it.
Wow, those drawings and illustrations in the 1954 brochure! And I thought those 1960s Pontiac ads exaggerated the shapeliness of the cars; the ones here barely look anything like a real Bug. I mean, that Bugatti Veyron curve on the rear quarter panel doesn’t exist on the real car. Did they think drawing them like this would make them look more sleek?
I worked with a guy who had been a loyal VW driver for years, with a 63 Bug and a 71 Ghia convertible, which he loved. He traded the Ghia on one of the last Beetle convertibles – he called it an 80 but maybe it was a 79. He only kept it for a year because he said it would never start in wet weather. It sounds like an electrical issue that never got diagnosed properly, but he moved on.
I do remember new/late model VWs going from everywhere around 1970 to unusual by 1975-76. And with exchange rates being what they were then, VW was not able to use Henry Ford’s trick of propping up sales by super-cheap prices.
How many 2019 NewBeetles were produced, and how many were convertibles ?
That’s a gorgeous bug. Glad someone appreciates it.
About 15 years ago, I helped pull a guy out of a twin to this bug that he had rolled onto its side by taking a turn too fast. He was dazed, but okay. But I’m sure that was the end of the road for that nice old silver bug.
Although I have a love of these old VWs, they do look so dinky and dangerous, especially if you tried to drive one in modern traffic. Maybe it’s a little easier to do on the streets of Eugene?
I’m not sure if anyone intentionally had the foresight to buy and preserve a ’77 sedan at the time but I know gobs of folks did with the ’79 cab – including my friend’s dad.
Time will tell if they’ll even be the nest egg people thought they’d be but at least maybe they bought them at close-out prices?
Even driven but low mileage ‘79s have already turned into nest eggs, for the most part. Good condition ones with 25-50k miles typically bring north of $20,000. Expect at least double that for ones stored specifically to preserve, especially in the right color combination. Case in point-
Original 239 mile ‘79 Super Beetle convertible:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1979-volkswagen-super-beetle-cabriolet-13/
i adore all beetles. even the mexican/brazilian ones.
A color generally panned for its ubiquity manages to look fresh and exciting when applied to a Beetle. It looks great in silver and I very much like the look of the last of these, including (especially!) the large tail lights. I hope the owner takes good care of it, the late Cabrios are still relatively common, the sedans not nearly so much.
Grew up in a 59 convertible, then a 64 with a sun roof, then a 69 and finally a Super Beetle. I used to ride behind the rear seat – with my sister! It was our second car. World’s worst defroster in Chicago and Colorado, by far. Used to scrap the inside windshield while driving during the winter. My dad installed a fan on the A pillar that he’d turn on to defrost a patch in order to drive. They were everywhere until about 1980.
They were still around when I attended university in Colorado and I had two roommates with them. However, they were mostly junk by then. The Super Beetle didn’t hang around because it just wasn’t as much fun to drive as the older Beetles, and it was really out of style. It was traded in for a Toyota HiLux.
I have absolutely no love for them. They just got us around town. I crawled into one about a decade ago and went around the block, marveling at its crude design. I can’t believe we rode around in them. When I attended university in Germany, I didn’t see any of them. I even went to Woeffenbuettel and I didn’t see a single Beetle. They seem more popular in the States than in Deutschland.
Thank God we never had a crash in one.
“Thank God we never had a crash in one.” I commuted in a ’65 in the early 1980s, until I got T-boned on the passenger side. A guy was waiting to pull out and his foot slipped from the brake to the gas. Less than fifty feet of Datsun acceleration, but the VW folded up like a paper cup. Filled the child seat next to me with broken glass. Thank heavens it was unoccupied. I was really shocked how bad a crash was in that car.
This ’77 must have the federally-mandated-by-then door beams.
Captivating sales chart — the Beetle’s fall is as fascinating as its rise.
Regarding today’s featured car, it looks like it was sold recently, and this ad provides some detail:
https://classiccars.com/listings/view/877996/1977-volkswagen-beetle-for-sale-in-no-city-no-state-
Looks like it was owned by the dealership owner himself, and the car only had 5,877 mi. on it when it was sold. That would explain the car’s immaculate condition. It also explains the dealership sticker.
And I love the nighttime photo of the dealership here. Not completely relevant, but I recently came across a photo from my local VW/Porsche/Audi dealership from 1979 as well… attached below:
I think though I’m probably wrong VWs arrived in NZ around 55, I drove a 55 model quite a lot when at highschool, underpowered and with terrible lights and brakes though they matched its engine performance, but Beetles disappeared in the early 70s local assembly stopped in 71 or so and all our cars were imported from OZ and they just stopped appearing, VWs were never a cheap car here and competed directly with things like Ford Cortinas Hillman Minxs Vauxhall Victors which were all better equipped and more powerfull and cheaper to repair as VW parts were never cheap either, The new FWD Golf was expensive compared to British and Japanese competition so didnt really take off either and the Japanese just got better and stole the market on price and equipment, Ive never seen a FI Beetle though have seen FI type 3s in Aussie mostly in junkyards but they did go there.
There’s Fiver, my Rabbit! Except that this one has chrome bumpers and accents.
I am glad that the last American Beetle was of the original design, rather than a Super Beetle.
I note in reading the Business Week article how much work Volkswagen put into providing good dealer service and readily available parts. And then I remember the really bad dealer service and treatment I received with my Rabbit. I am wondering, what happened to all that good service? Financial constraints following the precipitous fall of the Beetle? Difficulty in adjusting to the service needs of such a different vehicle? A change in Volkswagen’s relationships with US dealers? This seems like such an important piece of the Volkswagen USA story.
I’m going to guess it was a huge disconnect between the solid reliability of the air-cooled Volkswagens vs. the water-cooled disasters (from a reliability perspective) that followed. The service departments probably weren’t used to that much work, and the attitude was most likely, “Volkswagen’s are reliable cars. What did you do wrong?”
Our local VW dealer was incredibly horrible, arrogant and terrible with service. He didn’t care at all. So when the Rabbit showed up, he just continued with his terrible customer service.
Honestly, I don’t know anyone who had anything nice to say about that huge VW dealer.
Growing up, I do remember seeing a number of Super Beetles in the early ‘70s, and really liking the larger taillights and the curved windshield versus the smaller taillights and flat windscreen of the older models.
My favorite was a 1972 Cabrio owned by a family down the street that was red with a black top and interior and highly polished chrome wheels – classy, in my book. The parents were immigrants from Germany and the wife drove the Cabrio everywhere with their three kids, naming the car Schatzi because she loved it so much. The husband much preferred his black 1971 Caprice 2-door hardtop, but he kept both cars in perfect condition, always clean and freshly waxed, even in the middle of a Chicago winter. The Beetle was eventually passed down to the oldest daughter, who took it to college in California and was replaced by an Audi Fox, which lasted only a year or two. After the Fox suddenly disappeared in the late ‘70s, I noticed, as others above, that Beetles in general no longer seemed so prolific on the road any more.
Paul’s point about the Beetle being “in” for so long is spot on. The car’s economy and durability contributed to the legacy but most of all, it’s what the Beetle DIDN’T represent that made it an icon.
The Type II was able to hold onto being “cool” just a little while longer, but I remember the Beetle kinda just fading out. Almost as if to say, hey, if you really want one, there’s plenty of used ones.
Not that they ever became uncool, otherwise why create a reboot New Beetle?
As already noted, those with the means to buy new, yet wanted something small and economical, had plenty of other choices, including VW’s own Rabbit.
I’m glad to see such a well preserved late Beetle. I just wish it were mine.
I prefer the Beetles from the 1970’s; the newer, the more durable they became, and they even had larger heater boxes beginning in 1975.
I especially liked the exhaust note on the catalytic converter cars, with a deep rumble. Not all fuel injection cars have a cat; I though only the California certified cars had a cat, at least in 1975-76. And the computer behind the rear seat really took up very little room.
The ’75 Super Beetle (Le Grand Bug) I bought new went 200K miles through 3 owners with very little attention. I miss it.
Pretty nice find. I should add that the Brazilian Beatle (here we call it “Fusca”) was killed in 1986 and reborn in 1993, and that with 99% of sheetmetal and drivetrain the same as the 1986. Then was killed again in 1996, this time for good.
It’s interesting that the last Beetle sedans imported were of the front-trailing-arm design while the last Beetles sold in the US were the curved-windshield, strut-front-suspension Super Beetle convertibles. VW worked in mysterious ways. It must have been terrifying watching Beetle sales evaporate during 1974, with the Rabbit still in development.
One might think that fuel economy would have moved some Beetles in 1974, but they actually weren’t all that efficient by the time they were cleaned up to meet emissions standards and loaded down with 5 mph bumpers and door beams. Something like a Datsun 1200, Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla was in another world of efficiency and the door of the import market had been opened wide to the Japanese.
A friend in college bought a 1975 Beetle as a fairly used car. It had been fitted with a carbureted 1974 engine before he bought it, which he was convinced was a virtue. His previous car had been a 1976 Corolla SR5 liftback, which needed a head-gasket at about 180K miles, prompting him to scrap it.
For whatever reason, my friend was convinced that his Beetle was much faster than it actually was. This was about 1989, and four cylinder compact cars in beater use tended to have between 65 and 120 horsepower instead of 46, but my friend was convinced that his Beetle was the equal of all sorts of perfectly average cars in a race. It was as quick as an automatic 240D that I had briefly at the time, but unlike my friend I had no illusions of the Mercedes-Benz diesel being even acceptably quick. As soon as I faced regular mountain ascents, the 240D was gone for an ’85 Jetta GL 5-speed.
The Beetle driver thought his car as fast as the Jetta, which was capable of 105 mph and 0-60 in about 11 seconds. That didn’t stop him from trying to outrun me after I dropped him off from a party. The only problem is that the car he thought was mine was actually a police officer, initiating one of two DUIs he collected in a two-week period. He must have really liked the Beetle, as I know he kept it during his long vacation from having a driver’s license. I think I even saw him driving it after he received his law degree from UVA and got married to a girl I knew before I met him.
Why does this late Beetle have a flat screen?
Because it’s a Beetle, and not a Super Beetle! Two different cars, eh?
The Super Beetle went out of production back in 1975, when the Golf went into production. From then on, it was standard Beetles only, which had been made all along too. There never were Super Beetles made anywhere except in Germany.
The Cabrio continued to be made in Super Beetle form because Karmann had switched production to it some years earlier, and price/cost was not an issue.
It’s not just the flat screen; the Super Beetle had a much longer, wider and bulging nose too. And early (1971-1972) Super Beetles did have flat screen (image attached). Are you really confused now? if so, head here: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-classic-1971-vw-super-beetle-1971-small-car-comparison-no-5/
Oh! I had no idea the curved screen was so short-lived. They’re way nicer to sit in, especially if one is generously supplied in the nose department: I could clear a fog-hole on the screen without my hands leaving the wheel in the flat-windowed ones. Well, almost.
I drove one quite a bit years back. Great handling, poor gearchange, and bad fuel economy (still on leaded fuel here, too, so no excuses about pollution controls). Reliability was essentially imaginary. A pretty awful device, handling notwithstanding.
Here, the Superbug started flat-glassed, got a curve, and lost a curve again at the end, to use up CKD kits as production ended in ’76. To add confusion, we got the flat-screened circa-1970 body (plus updates like big taillights, black dash, etc)) but with the pissy little 1300 and swing axles and 4-wheel drums till ’75, as a price-leader (the source of those leftover CKD kits, most likely).
So, US Bugs reverted to torsion-bar front-ends and strut rears/trailing arms, with a flat screen after ’75, as my eyes can’t see the big nose front on this ’77? Or I have I breathed in too many lead fumes from the pongy front tank in the late ’80’s to ever get it sorted?
Here, the Superbug started flat-glassed, got a curve, and lost a curve again at the end, to use up CKD kits as production ended in ’76.
Are you saying in Australia the Super Beetle reverted to a flat windshield after having had the curved one? That’s extremely difficult to believe. Those flat-glass SB CKD kits would have had to be sitting around somewhere for several years.
Given that your failing eyesight can’t distinguish between a standard Beetle and a Super Beetle (as your earlier comment shows), I’m quite certain that you got what we got: the Standard Beetle with the flat glass.
The 1300cc motor was by far the most preferred in Germany, where they had a choice. It was only slightly less powerful than the 1500, but accelerated just about as fast, as it had lower (higher numerical) gearing. And it was a lot less thirty than the 1500/1600, which really turned Europeans off it.
The 1300 was my favorite too: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-classic-1966-vw-1300-the-best-beetle-of-them-all/
The more I read your comment the more confused you sound, so let’s leave it at that. Lead poisoning does affect cognitive functions, unfortunately. 🙂
I know this thread is a bit old but nevertheless… In the US standard and Super were sold side by side all along until all the way to 1978. 1971-75 standard Beetle sedans do exist although they’re fairly scarce. There is a ’73 standard Bug that hangs around a few blocks away from my house in San Francisco. And a blue ’75 injected La Grande that sits a couple streets over.
All that happened in ’75 is that VW basically stopped importing the Super sedan leaving just the standard sedan and the convertible. The ’76-77 sedans do pop occasionally but they’re rare not only because of numbers but also because they have to pass SMOG unlike earlier cars making them difficult to modify and a pain to run.
I own a ’72 flat windshield Super and it’s a great little car still. Perfect for city driving with big bumpers, good turning circle and modest dimensions. Easy to mod too.
The thing I liked about a Beetle was the fact that an adult American could actually sit comfortably in it, and it was easy to get in and out of (front seats, anyway).
For a guy over 6′ with long legs, Japanese cars back then were pretty nightmarish.
So why exactly did the Super Beetle go over like a lead balloon? It seems like a decent idea to me – the new suspension, wider hood, extra length, and some reconfiguration opened up a much larger cargo area in front. It also reduced the turning circle despite the longer wheelbase. Inside, the curved windscreen (when it arrived) with a real dashboard made the interior seem less claustrophobic with the flat windshield in your face. I wonder what would have happened it they just made all Beetles like this and didn’t keep the standard Beetle around at the same time.
The Wikipedia entry for the Beetle says “the rear luggage area was fitted with a folding parcel shelf” starting in 1972, not that the rear compartment was taken away a la 1961 Corvair. I haven’t done time in the back of late-period Beetles so I don’t know myself.
It didn’t, at all. It sold quite well. It was designed to be a better Beetle, and was positioned above the standard Beetle, which continued to be made in Germany as a cheap entry level car. The Super Beetle was the majority of the production in Germany during its life, and the only version available in the US.
The reason Super Beetle sales fell after 1973 had noting to do with it being a Super Beetle specifically, but because the market and taste for small cars had moved on. It wasn’t really that much better than the standard Beetle, and the Japanese small cars in the US, and all the other small new FWD cars in Europe were much better cars.
So when the Golf came out, VW simply dropped the more expensive Super Beetle and built only the standard Beetle, since it was cheaper to build and it was priced below the Golf/Rabbit.
Beetle production in Germany was dropping fast, and it made sense to consolidate on one version only.
That makes sense. VW themselves seemed to drop most (all?) Beetle advertising after the Rabbit became available, and Rabbit ads (the one shown above was one of many) tried to convince Beetle intenders to consider a Rabbit instead because it was so much better.
Are you sure the Super Beetle was the only version available in the US? Brochures for at least for the two years I looked at show a “Basic Beetle” available as well as the SB.
You’re right; the basic Beetle was also available during the Super Beetle’s run.
I thought I read that due to the cost savings from the MacPherson strut suspension, the Super Beetle was cheaper to produce (in spite of featuring amenities like full carpeting, fan powered ventilation, and chrome window trim) than the Basic Beetle. Maybe the curved window Super was more expensive?
I seriously doubt that. For one thing, the tooling amortization for the Standard Beetle had been paid ages ago. The SB had a higher cost basis if for no other reason than to amortize that new tooling.
Anyway, the Standard Beetle was always sold for less. And if the SB was cheaper to build, why did they go back to just the Standard beetle? Doesn’t exactly make sense.
The curved windshield just raised the amortization per unit even higher. And it undoubtedly was also more expensive even without the amortization.
Does the sales chart include sales of Super Beetles? If so, then 1974 must have been a lean year for people dependent on US VW sales.
I had a neighbor who was a VW true believer. He had a laundry list of reasons why he thought the Type 1 was better than the Super Beetle. According to him, the Super Beetle required far more fuel to maintain autobahn speeds, had less useful luggage space, and had a few other faults I’ve forgotten.
The Super Beetle was short-lived for many reasons, not least of which being that it was an evolution of a 1930s idea competing with far more efficient packaging solutions and far more efficient engine designs. Also, VW and Porsche were both concerned that air cooled engines wouldn’t be able to meet European drive-by noise regulations. That’s why Porsche developed the 928 and 924, and also why VW halted air-cooled engine development.
Yes.
Speaking of late-model time capsules, in 2002 I rented a brand-new, white-on black Mexican Beetle Sedán from a mom-and-pop place in Merida. It was so brand-new that we had to wait while they pulled the plastic sheeting off the seats! Even new it had the rubber-and-horsehair funk of the old ones I’d ridden in as a child in the 70s and a teen in the 80s.
The nostalgic side of me really wanted it to be great, but piloting that car for a week around the highways and byways of the Yucatán peninsula was a clear reminder that technology does indeed move on. Its acceleration, below par in the early 1950s, was noisy and despite fuel injection was no match for contemporary traffic. Braking required advanced forecasting skills, a strong leg, and rapid steering corrections as hard stops couldn’t be counted on to proceed in a straight line. The tiny windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with tropical rain, and the glass steamed up unromantically. To its credit, the suspension could handle rough terrain if you didn’t mind the springy ride. Fuel economy, if I recall, was rated on a windshield sticker at around 11l/100km; not great especially given the trade offs.
The following year I rented a similarly new white-on-black Nissan B13 Tsuru (known in the States as Sentra, the B13 was built in Mexico until 2017) from the same family. This put the nail in the coffin of my nostalgia for the Beetle: every single aspect of the econobox Nissan was superior to the Beetle except its appearance. Handling was great, visibility was great, it rode quietly and smoothly and air conditioning sure beat wing vents. Fuel economy was closer to 8l/100km.
I will certainly remember the Beetle longer than the Nissan, though.
Such an enduringly, endearingly appealing car. Paul, thanks for this one.
I just remembered that sometime in the 90s, on the expressway, an old Beetle was driving along, with the front hood removed, and several small children riding in the open cargo area. I was stunned at the stupidity of that, but the kids did look like they were having fun, and being buffeted by a lot of wind. Too bad you can’t pick your parents though.
I admit I never got the whole Beetle thing. Even as a small kid it didn’t look very interesting to me. It just looked boring, and sounded weird to me. There were Datsun 240Zs and muscle cars still around in the early 70s, as well as the big land yachts that sounded cool with their 4bbl carbs opened up getting on the highway. Beetles seemed so sad and lame in comparison.
I remember being about six and seeing one with the Rolls front end, in navy blue, and thinking it was ugly but more interesting than the normal car. Now I respect their history and legacy but still see them as a toy and not a “real” car. I still can barely tell a normal Beetle from a Super Beetle. Maybe the bigger tail lights with the amber turn-signals.
Having said all that, the silver example is quite clean looking, and I like the wheels.
—And the article was excellent. It made learning about a car I care little about interesting, and that’s how you know you’ve written something well.
“And he (Ben Pon) did not meet with success; he …apparently sold the other one, as there’s no record of him driving it back to the Netherlands.”
Then as now, driving it from New York to the Netherlands would be quite a feat.
My Father’s Volkswagen was a ’59 Beetle, which got totaled in front of our house sometime in 1968. He was in the Army in Germany during the Korean conflict, and drove quite a few Beetles in the early 50’s so he was well acquainted with them when he bought the ’59 used more than 10 years later (don’t remember him mentioning Jeeps, but he drove a REO truck over there). He looked at buying a Beetle in 1974 but something stopped him (probably the price?)…his last Japanese car ended up being a 1976 Subaru DL he bought new.
I actually went “backwards” from a Japanese car (’74 Datsun 710) to VW (’78 Scirocco) back in 1981. Have owned 3 watercooled VWs including my current 2000 Golf (haven’t owned any car but VW since)…all of them fuel injected (different injection on each) and all manual transmission. Probably a bit more expensive to buy, but I’ve held on to them awhile so I think it evened out…though the maintenance on them is probably higher than Japanese cars, and they do like it regularly.
I’m a “form should follow function” kind of person, so though I liked the aircooled Beetle, I never went for the watercooled ones…though they initially came out right before I bought my current 2000 Golf…to me the body works for a rear engine rear drive car, not a front engine front drive one. My Golf is 20 years old this year, don’t know what I’ll buy next, wouldn’t mind another Golf (but without the vinyl seats) but unfortunately the next car is bound to be an automatic, my first since the ’74 Datsun.
Are there any air-cooled engines in cars anymore? I heard that they were harder to get emission compliant than watercooled ones, so maybe even without changing tastes the aircooled Beetle was going to be hard to sell with tougher emissions standards.
Wouldn’t it be funny…if the next “big” thing after SUVs is that people figure they no longer want that body style and want to get an aircooled Beetle? Well, without power windows, good air conditioning, etc, probably not likely.
I was given a 1300cc 1972 flat screen. It had been a family car for many years, affectionately, and with true English irony, known as the Millenium Falcon. The deal was that I had to keep it on the road. What I thought would be 6 months work in my spare time turned into an 18 month marathon (the multiply by 3 seems to apply to all project planning). Fortunately there’s an excellent supply of repair panels for Beetles and I became a dab hand with the MIG welder.
Eventually it was ready and we hit the road for a trip to North Wales (proper Wales my in-laws tell me) to visit the relatives. It was a very slow trip. I kept it for 3 years and my son used it a further 3 before it went to young hippy who ran it for another 4.
Properly rust proofed they last for ever, but they’re so underpowered, you change down for the slightest inclination when loaded. The swing axle was positively lethal in the wet, many a heart stopping moment as she fish-tailed down the road. Whoever thought that was a good idea? It didn’t surprise me to discover that Tatras were known as widow makers. With no weight over the steering she had a strong tendency to plough straight on if you braked with any sort of lock on, especially on low grip surfaces, more heart stopping moments.
They say Adolf was a bit of a petrol head and calling it the ‘strength thru joy’ car certainly shows he had a sense of irony. Despite its manifold faults, perhaps because of them, I still remember it fondly.