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The Week in Germany: Culture January 25, 2008 Fahrvergnügen: Enthusiasts Keep Memory of VW Beetle Alive
The VW Beetle is a rare sight on German roads these days but its memory is preserved by legions of fans. Some 66,000 of the bug-shaped cars are still registered as roadworthy, 30 years after the last one rolled off the production lines in Germany on Jan. 19, 1978. Enthusiasts were still able to buy the legendary cars made at Volkswagen's plant at Puebla in Mexico until manufacture of the Beetle ceased there in mid-2003. A total of 21.5 million were produced since the first one hit the road in 1935, based on a design by Ferdinand Porsche, grandfather of the current VW chairman Ferdinand Piech. The Beetle was conceived by the Nazis as a car for the masses - the name Volkswagen translates into 'people's car' - but World War II put an end to that. Today, numerous fan clubs in Germany and around the world preserve the memory of the Beetle. The oldest, founded in 1975, has 800 members, according to its chairman, Hartmut Schroer. A forest ranger from Bavaria in the south of Germany, he is the proud owner of several Beetles, the oldest dating back to 1949, making it 10 years older than himself.
"It's green, without any decorative strips on the outside paneling and has clocked 60,000 kilometers (37,282 miles)," he says. Another one is a black sports version from 1957 that he bought from a coalman who rarely used it because he did not possess a driver's license. "It's almost brand-new," says Schroer. The fastest car in his collection is a 1303 model from 1973 that is fitted with a Porsche engine. It has a top speed of 135 kilometers (84 miles) per hour, "but uses a lot of gas," he says. Schroer doesn't use this car when he travels to the club's twice yearly rallies because of a regulation which allows only those vehicles produced before August 1, 1957 to participate. That was when Volkswagen replaced the Beetle's original pretzel-shaped oval rear windows with one-piece glass. Like other fan clubs, Schroer's Pretzel Window Club has its own website that lists events and where to get spare parts, as well as showing photos and giving travel reports. One event scheduled for May 23-25 at Hückeswagen near Cologne features Beetles with over 100,000 kilometers on the clock. Last year's rally attracted 250 vintage VWs. In 1968, the Beetle was turned into a fictional car character called Herbie, which had a mind of its own and was capable of driving itself. Disney studios produced several films in the series, with the last one, Herbie: Fully Loaded, drawing record audiences in Germany after it hit the box office in 2005.
But the Beetle was last year forced to relinquish the production record it held from 1972 to its successor model, Golf. "The 25 millionth Golf came off the production lines in May 2007," said VW spokesman Andreas Meurer. "It overtook (the Beetle) a long time ago." The last German Beetle was made at the VW factory in Emden. It can now be seen at the Volkswagen museum in Wolfsburg, where Europe's biggest automaker has its headquarters. The iconic car was reborn as the New Beetle in 1998. Produced in Mexico,
around 1 million New Beetle limousines and convertibles have been sold
since then - a quarter of them in Europe. (Vera Jansen/dpa) Links: 'Herbie's Grandchild': VW Plans 'New' New Beetle (TWIG, August 3, 2007) Car-Making and Service Providers (Germany.info/Facts About Germany) |
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