Volkswagen Celebrates 75 Years in America

Seventy-five years ago, a pair of Volkswagen Beetles were imported to this country, marking the start of this brand on our shores. Tempus fugit, VW plans to roll out numerous advertisement efforts to mark the milestone.

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Used Car of the Day: 2004 Volkswagen Beetle

This Chicago-based 2004 Volkswagen Beetle convertible is a bit different from our usual pickings.

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Used Car of the Day: Volkswagen Beetle TDI

This modified Volkswagen Beetle TDI has mud tires -- and a lot more when it comes to some off-roading type stuff.

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Should the Volkswagen Beetle Come Back or Remain Dead?

Autoblog reports via Autocar that no one should expect the Volkswagen Beetle (or Scirocco) to ever return.

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Junkyard Find: 1978 Volkswagen Beetle Convertible

Volkswagen sold the air-cooled Beetle in the United States all the way through 1979, amazingly, overlapping Dasher and Rabbit sales by more than you’d have expected. By that time, the only air-cooled VW left standing here was the Beetle convertible (if you want to get nit-picky, that car was really a Super Beetle, since the last year for the original not-so-super Beetle was 1977 here and all the Beetle convertibles were Supers after 1971). I’ve never found a ’79 Beetle in the junkyard, though I’ve tried my best, but here’s the next-best thing: a ’78 in a Denver self-serve yard last year.

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Junkyard Find: 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle

The air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle was pretty well obsolete when North American sales took off during the late 1950s, and so this mid-1930s design had become shockingly obsolete by the 1970s. Still, Americans understood the Beetle as a comfortably known quantity by that time and the price tag was really cheap, so Beetles and Super Beetles still sold well in 1973.

In the parts of the continent where the Rust Monster remains meek, plenty of these cars still exist, enough for them to be fairly common sights in the big self-service junkyards. Here’s a ’73 Super Beetle in a San Francisco Bay Area yard.

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Volkswagen Retrofitting Electric Powertrains Into Old Beetles

With the last incarnation of the Volkswagen Beetle officially dead and buried, VW is hoping to breathe new life into vintage models by retrofitting them with electric powertrains. While purists will no doubt frame this as the blatant ruination of a historic model, something tells us that plenty of Beetle fans are just quirky enough to dig the idea.

On Thursday, Volkswagen Group Components announced that its partnership with eClassics has birthed the “e-Beetle” (e-Käfer in German). Borrowing components from the company’s European e-Up, the model is supposed to be a proof of concept for the electric conversion of other historic models — with VW noting that an e-Porsche 356 and electrified Microbus are already in the works.

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VW Recalls 679,000 U.S. Vehicles Over Rollaway Risk

On Friday, Volkswagen Group announced the recall of 679,000 U.S. vehicles that could roll away due to an electrical problem. Apparently, silicate buildup can accumulate on the shift lever micro switch and trick the car into thinking the vehicle is in park.

As a result, some customers might be able to remove their key before the car has actually been made stationary — creating problems among the highly inattentive.

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QOTD: Bittersweet Beetle?

As you no doubt already know, we lost a big name this week. The Volkswagen Beetle ⁠— formerly the Volkswagen New Beetle, Volkswagen Beetle, Volkswagen Type 1, Volkswagen, KdF-Wagen, etc — finally bit the dust in Puebla, Mexico on Wednesday.

A mariachi band was on hand to provide the last production Beetle with an up-tempo swan song, Deutsche Welle reports. While it’s the end of the line for the historic, Hitler-tainted nameplate, memories remain. Do you have a personal encounter with this model you’d like to share?

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The People's Car: Bye Bye Beetle

Volkswagen’s Beetle has officially ended production. The last examples of the brand’s famous model rolled off the assembly line at VW’s Puebla plant in Mexico this week, with the company reserving the final one for display at Volkswagen’s local museum. The automaker said the car would live on as “a lasting tribute to the automobile’s rich and storied heritage.”

As one of the most recognizable and historically important cars ever made, the original Type 1 was manufactured between 1938 and 2003. The “New” Beetle hit the assembly line in 1997 before being replaced by the A5 version in 2011. Technically, that’s the car that’s getting the axe. However, with nothing in line to replace it, Beetle as a whole is going the way of the dodo.

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QOTD: Terribly Aged Europeans of the Nineties?

Lately, we’ve featured a succession of posts relating to automotive style in the Nineties here at Question of the Day. We started out discussing the best of the best from America, Europe, and Asia. Then, last week, we moved on to the Worst Ever awards from America. Many of you said I was nuts for disliking the refreshed Lincoln Mark VIII. While I still don’t like the VIII post-’96, I’ll agree the Buick Skylark for 1992 would’ve been a better selection. There, happy?

Let’s see if I can get my European selection to be a bit more agreeable to all you connoisseurs of things Nineties.

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Junkyard Find: 2001 Volkswagen New Beetle Sport

The early-21st century fad for retro-styled cars, including the PT Cruiser, Chevrolet HHR, Mini Cooper, and Fiat 500, got its start with the late-1990s introduction of the Volkswagen New Beetle (we’re still waiting for a Nissan model made to look like the Datsun F-10). Like most people (and especially like most who had ever owned a real air-cooled Beetle), I grew weary of the sight of these allegedly cute cars after a few years, and as a result I’ve been ignoring the many examples I find during my junkyard travels.

These cars make up an important piece of our collective automotive history, though, and I resolved that I’d shoot the first one I found on a recent wrecking-yard trip. Here it is, straight from the Denver U-Pull-&-Pay!

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Ace of Base: 2019 Volkswagen Beetle S

When you start life advertising yer brand as “The People’s Car,” you’d better have a hella good value proposition. Fortunately for Volkswagen, that’s exactly what it had when the brand burst onto these shores all those years ago. Before long, driveways and parking lots were filled with affordable Bugs as customers bought into the Size Small lifestyle.

What’s is it like these days, though? This calendar year is, allegedly, the final one for the stalwart VW Beetle. Does it still offer value for money? Or is it fading away into the wings as an overpriced retro throwback that should be thrown back in favor of a Golf or Jetta? Let’s find out.

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VW Reveals the Last Beetle - And This Time, It's Final. Maybe.

The Volkswagen Beetle, a machine that has a grand total of three (count ’em) generations since its introduction, will be ushered out the factory door in Puebla next July. The modern Bug, as we know it today, showed up as a concept car in 1997 and entered production a couple of years later as the New Beetle. In 2011, the car found itself restyled and rechristened as simply the Beetle, just like the old Beetle. But not the New Beetle, even though most people continued to call the New New Beetle the New Beetle, despite its official name being simply Beetle.

Achtung! No one ever said naming conventions had to make sense.

Whatever you want to call it, production of the car will wrap up in mid-2019. As a send off, VW has crafted a special model option called the Final Edition.

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Put the Poncho Away: Volkswagen's Beetle Sees a 'Final Edition' for 2019

Kiss the never-ending Summer of Love goodbye. Leaves are falling from the trees, there’s a chill in the air, and Becky from Sacramento just left with your best friend — and wallet. After two latter-day revivals, the Volkswagen Beetle, formerly the New Beetle, formerly the Beetle, formerly the KdF-Wagen, looks to be entering its final model year.

There’s no concrete plan to return it to the lineup at any point in the future, either, despite the tie-dyed dreams of certain wistful VW executives. Maybe this truly is the end.

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  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
  • Carson D The UAW has succeeded in organizing a US VW plant before. There's a reason they don't teach history in the schools any longer. People wouldn't make the same mistakes.
  • B-BodyBuick84 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport of course, a 7 seater, 2.4 turbo-diesel I4 BOF SUV with Super-Select 4WD, centre and rear locking diffs standard of course.
  • Corey Lewis Think how dated this 80s design was by 1995!
  • Tassos Jong-iL Communist America Rises!