Volkswagen is halting production of the last version of its Beetle model this week at its plant in Puebla, Mexico. It has been: a part of Germany's darkest hours as a never-realized Nazi prestige project. The car's original design — a rounded silhouette with seating for four or five, nearly
1 / 24The Last BeetleFILE - In this Dec. 8 2007 file photo, a model poses next to a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle covered in tiles made of a blend of 18 karat gold and glass at the annual Luxury Show in Bucharest, Romania. The car is functional and on sale for 60,000 euros, $88,000. However it is not street legal in Romania because of the nature of its paint.
The car's original design — a rounded silhouette with seating for four or five, nearly vertical windshield and the air-cooled engine in the rear — can be traced back to Austrian engineer Ferdinand Porsche, who was hired to fulfill German dictator Adolf Hitler's project for a"people's car" that would spread auto ownership the way the Ford Model T had in the U.S.
Re-launched as a civilian carmaker under supervision of the British occupation authorities, the Volkswagen factory was transferred in 1949 to the Germany government and the state of Lower Saxony, which still owns part of the company. By 1955, the one millionth Beetle - officially called the Type 1 - had rolled off the assembly line in what was now the town of Wolfsburg.
"Unlike in West Germany, where its low price, quality and durability stood for a new postwar normality, in the United States the Beetle's characteristics lent it a profoundly unconventional air in a car culture dominated by size and showmanship," wrote Bernhard Rieger in his 2013 history,"The People's Car."
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