The Beetle: Final Act

Straddling two centuries, it’s seen it all: the rise and fall of social, economic and industrial currents. Just over eighty years old yet already living two distinct lives, much like the legendary heroine of that famous Hitchcock film. Now the Volkswagen Beetle steps down from its place in history and ascends into the realm of myth.

Hitler’s dream car—modeled on Italy’s Fiat 500, which Mussolini had demanded “so that every Italian could afford a low-priced vehicle”—has officially rolled off the assembly line at the Puebla plant in Mexico, its longtime home. The final Beetle out of more than twenty-one million will surely find its resting place in a museum. Who would have guessed that the Führer’s people’s car would later become the emblem of the hippie generation?

Porsche devised a 1.2-liter, air-cooled boxer engine and, to save cabin space, placed it in the rear. The result: seating for five and a roomy front trunk. Then there was the silhouette—soft and curvaceous like a Rubens painting, inspired by the scarab that gave it its name. It became an unstoppable success, and by the late ’60s, alongside the VW microbus, it had risen to symbol status for the Flower Children.

War years inevitably halted production as the company shifted to cannons, tanks and ammunition for the war effort. Then came the rebirth in 1955: a million cars sold in no time. From Germany, the market spread to the United States—a financial lifeline for postwar Germany. In 1968, U.S. sales reached a record 560,000 vehicles, a phenomenon never before seen. A decade later, the Golf would eclipse the Beetle in Germany, but in America—and particularly in Mexico, where it was affectionately known as the “Vocho”—its allure never dimmed. The last styling tweaks date to the 1990s, a final flourish conceived by Porsche’s grandson: the New Beetle, a completely different creature from the model whose curtain has just fallen.