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Volkswagen Beetle Production Comes To A Grinding Halt
10 Jul 2019, 16:56 UTC ·
by Mircea Panait
Home > News > Car Profile
Starting at $20,895 in the United States, the Beetle is no longer available to order. The final example of the breed – a coupe finished in Denim Blue – will be exhibited at the Volkswagen museum in Puebla. Speaking of which, the first-ever Beetle manufactured in Mexico rolled off the assembly line in 1967.
12 photos
Known as the Type 1 back when Volkswagen was nothing more than the dream of a mad man, the Beetle was redesigned from the ground up in 1997 with the introduction of the New Beetle. In other words, it was a re-bodied Golf Mk. 4 with a flower vase next to the steering wheel. Then the Volkswagen Group A5 vehicle architecture of the Golf Mk. 6 served as the building block for the current model, packing up to five cylinders and 2.5 liters of displacement.
From air cooling to liquid cooling, rear-engined to front-engined, body-on-frame to unibody, the Beetle had a long and interesting run since it was unveiled in 1938. Soon after the second war to end all wars, the factory in Wolfsburg transitioned to civilian Beetle production in 1947. As a side note, Wolfsburg was founded in 1938 by the Nazi regime to house the German automaker’s workforce.
Over the years, the Beetle has been treated to countless special editions and one-off concepts. The Barbie, Denim, and Dune come to mind, but Volkswagen doesn’t plan to revive the nameplate anytime soon. Production at the Puebla factory will be reallocated to a compact SUV tailored to North America, slotted below the seven-seat Tiguan which is called Tiguan Allspace in the Old Continent.
Even without the Beetle, the peeps at Volkswagen took inspiration from the little bug when developing the ID.3 electric hatchback. The MEB-based vehicle features an electric motor at the rear, driving the rear wheels with up to 204 PS (201 horsepower) and 310 Nm (229 pound-feet) of torque.
The I.D. Buggy concept is rumored to enter limited production in the 2020s on the MEB, and if Volkswagen proves the rumors true, then the Beetle would get a spiritual successor of sorts. The best-known buggy with Beetle underpinnings is the Meyers Manx, which was built in limited numbers in the 1960s.
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