VW Beetle - An Icon

The VW Beetle Story... So far

Let’s start with a short history lesson. The term Volkswagen means “people’s car” in German and the whole idea of designing a car for the people came from a source which very few people will believe – it was Adolf Hitler. Back in the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler was much more than just a name, ordered Ferdinand Porsche to build a car which could seat 2 adults and 3 children, capable of travelling 100km/h and make all this possible within 10 months. The Nazi leader also insisted that the car should look like a Beetle, hence the name “Beetle” came up. Although Ferdinand had called the prototype as Type 1, he had to nod in favour of the Beetle name. To make all this possible, Ferdinand took the design that he was already working on for his personal travel and started looking for a space where he could put up a factory. Soon a location was chosen and by 1938 the Volkswagen Beetle was born which, weirdly, could only be purchased on installments where you will receive the car by the end of the last installment. The Beetle hard top was just 7200 rupees back then and the one with a soft top was 440 rupees more. By 1939, the factory in which the Beetle was being build was the largest in Europe, capable of producing 150000 cars annually.

Theoretically, the VW Beetle has been with us since 1930s and it is still being built today. Ferdinand Porsche took the rear-engine design of the Beetle and created another car which we today know as the Porsche 911 or the Carrera. Another fact to the Beetle’s name is that over 21 million have been manufactured with an air-cooled, rear-engine and rear-wheel drive setup which claims that it is the longest running and most manufactured car of a single design platform, worldwide. In a 1999 international poll for the world’s most influential car of the 20th century, the Type 1 (Beetle) came fourth, after the Ford Model T, the Mini and the Citroen DS.

The Beetle is manufactured in various parts of the world for different markets. This means that not all the markets get the same kind of engines or specifications. In India, we get the 2-litre engine, mated with an automatic gearbox producing around 115 BHP. The on-road (Delhi) price for the Beetle is around 24lacs and can I just say it is really a car for people who have too much money and don’t know where to spend it. I personally have never been a fan of the Beetle but the facts and figures don’t lie.