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The Volkswagen Beetle or Bug is a small family car, the best known car of Volkswagen, of Germany, and almost certainly the world. Thanks to its distinctive shape and sound, its reliability, and presumably other factors, it now enjoys a "cult" status.
The Beetle has been in production in various forms since 1938, interrupted only by the Second World War.
Officially, the "Beetle" name was never given to the original car. Inside Volkswagen, it was simply the "Type 1". The Beetle name only emerged officially with the New Beetle in 1998 (v.i.).
The origins of the car date back to 1930s Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler's desire that almost anybody should be able to afford a car fit with a proposal by car designer Ferdinand Porsche (1875–1952) The intention was that ordinary working Germans would buy the car by means of a savings scheme. Prototypes of the car called the KdF-Wagen (German: Kraft durch Freude = strength through joy), appeared from 1936 onwards (the very first prototypes were produced in Stuttgart). The car already had its distinctive round shape—designed by Erwin Komenda—and air-cooled, flat-four, rear-mounted engine. However the factory (in the new town of Kdf-Stadt, purpose-built for the factory workers), had only produced a handful of cars by the time war started in 1939. Consequently the first volume-produced versions of the car's chassis if not body were military vehicles, the jeep-like Kübelwagen (approx. 52,000) and the amphibious Schwimmwagen (approx. 14,000). Deliberately designed to be as simple as possible mechanically, there was simply less that could go wrong; the radiator-less air-cooled 985 cm³ 25 hp (19 kW) motors proved especially effective in action in North Africa's desert heat.
Much of the Beetle's design was inspired by the advanced Tatra cars of Hans Ledwinka. Tatra sued, but the lawsuit was stopped when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. The matter was re-opened after WW2 and in 1961 Volkswagen paid Tatra 3,000,000 Deutsche Marks.
The Volkswagen company owes its postwar existence largely to one man, British army officer Major Ivan Hirst (1916–2000). Post-war, he was ordered to take control of the heavily bombed factory, which the Americans had captured. He persuaded the British military to order 20,000 of the cars, and by 1946 the factory was producing 1,000 cars a month. The car and its town changed their Nazi-era names, to Volkswagen (people's car) and Wolfsburg. The first 1,785 Beetles were made in a factory near Wolfsburg in 1945.
Production of the "Type 1" VW Beetle (German: "Käfer"; US: "Bug"; French: "Coccinelle"; Italian: "Maggiolino"; Mexico: "Vocho" Brazil: "Fusca"; Spanish: "Escarabajo") increased dramatically over the years, the 1 millionth one rolling off the assembly line in 1954. During the 1960s and early 1970s innovative advertising campaigns and a glowing reputation for reliability and sturdiness helped production figures to surpass the levels of the previous record holder, the Ford Model T, when Beetle No. 15,007,034 was produced on February 17, 1972; by 1973 total production was over 16 million, and by 2002 there had been over 21 million produced.
Faced with stiff competition from more modern designs—in particular economical Japanese autos in the US—sales began dropping off in the mid-1970s. There had been several unsuccessful attempts to replace the Beetle throughout the 1960s; but the Type 3, Type 4 (411) and the NSU-based K70 were all momentous flops. Finally, production lines at Wolfsburg switched to the new water-cooled, front engined, front wheel drive Golf in 1974, a car unlike its predecessor in most significant ways. Beetle production continued in smaller numbers at other German factories until 1978, but mainstream production shifted to Brazil and Mexico; the last Beetle was produced in the latter country in mid-2003. Volkswagen sold Beetles in the United States until 1978 and in Europe until the mid-1980s.
Like its competitors the Mini and the Citroën 2CV, the Beetle has been regarded as something of a "cult" car since its 1960s association with the hippie movement.
From 1968 to 1997 a white Beetle with racing numbers and stripes named "Herbie" played a starring role in The Love Bug series of Disney comedy films. A yellow Wunderkäfer, called DuDu, appeared in a series of German films for children.
In 1998 Volkswagen launched the nostalgic New Beetle, a car technically unrelated to the original in every way, being based on the Golf, but deliberately reminiscent of the original's rounded shape. Marketing campaigns have stoked the continued goodwill people have towards the original, and helped the new model to inherit it to some extent. The mechanicals are shared with the other Volkswagen A platform cars.
In 2002 total production of the VW Golf, at 22 million units, overtook that of the Beetle. However this measure includes all four distinct generations of Golf since 1974.
By 2003 annual production had fallen to 30,000 from a peak of 1.3 million in 1971. On July 30, 2003, the final original VW Beetle (No. 21,529,464) was produced at the last remaining production facility in Puebla, Mexico, some 65 years since its public launch in Nazi Germany, and an unprecedented 58-year production run since 1945. VW announced this step in June, citing decreasing demand. The last car was immediately shipped off to the company's museum in Wolfsburg, Germany. In true Mexican fashion, a mariachi band serenaded the last car.
The final edition had the following specifications:
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