VW's Beetle Now a Senior Citizen

By Bill McLauchlan

This month, Volkswagen’s decidedly homely yet loveable little Beetle passed another major milestone of the many it has marked in its accomplished life.

That cause for celebration was the 65th. anniversary of its arrival in North America. Well, the U.S. actually, if you want to pick nits. On January 17, 1949, a Volkswagen ‘Type 1’, or Beetle, was shipped to New York City by Ben Pon Sr., a Dutch businessman and the world’s first official VW importer. That car – and another subsequent Beetle – found buyers the same year, marking the first time that Volkswagen products were sold on this continent.

First Beetle is unloaded in New York as importer Ben Pon Sr. (left) watches.

The passage of that special day brought back some fond memories for me, not the least of which is that I took my first driving lessons in a Beetle 55 years ago. Yikes, where did the time go? A Beetle played a principal role in another memorable, if less pleasant, memory. One which, on the way uphill out of Watkins Glen after the U.S. Grand Prix, had me leaning half-way out the passenger side window in a driving rain as I barfed the remains of a dodgy hotdog consumed earlier in the day. As they say, making memories …

Incidentally, the Beetle didn’t make it to Canada until three years later in 1952 when the first shipment of eight Beetles arrived in Toronto.

A cultural touchstone for an entire generation and one of the most iconic cars in the world, the Beetle led to the establishment of the first Volkswagen of America headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. in 1955. In 65 years, those first two pioneers grew to a brand that now offers almost a dozen different models that are sold by hundreds of dealers.

By the mid-50s, more than 35,000 Beetles had crawled ashore and by 1960 nearly 300,000 had found buyers. Americans were not only drawn to the affordability and practicality of the early Beetle – helped immensely by some very clever and creative advertising from Doyle, Dane and Bernbach – but were so charmed by its unique design, its size, and its fuel economy that they’d forged an emotional bond with the cars.

2014 Volkswagen New Beetle (rear) has come a long way since the first Beetle disembarked in 1949.

From custom paint jobs to open-top Dune Buggy bodies, the Beetle fit perfectly into the counter culture of the 1960s. Almost 450,000 Beetle vehicles a year were sold in the U.S. and Canada by 1968. In 1971, the last ‘Type 1’ Beetle rolled off the production line in Wolfsburg, Germany, though branch plant production continued in other markets for some time after.

Then, after its New Beetle concept took the Detroit auto show by storm, VW introduced a production version in 1998 – a vehicle that paid styling homage to its predecessor although it sported a water-cooled rather than air-cooled engine, and mounted at the front rather than at the rear. While staying true to its roots, today’s Beetle (revised again in 2011) would be unrecognizable to buyers in the ’50s.

Sadly, Ferdinand Porsche, instrumental in the design of the original Beetle, or “People’s Car”, as it was first called, didn’t live long enough to see his creation achieve such success. He died 62 years ago yesterday, at age 75, following a stroke, three years after the first Beetles landed in America.