The old-style Volkswagen Beetle began to drive off toward the sunset earlier this month when the car maker unveiled a final special edition of the beloved car, Automotive News Europe said.
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The company will stop producing the Beetle on Wednesday (July 30) this week at its plant here, the only factory still making the Bug.
To commemorate the car’s demise, VW is producing 3,000 special-edition Beetles for sale only in Mexico.
“True stars know when it’s time to retire, and the public knows it, too,” Jens Neumann, the head of Volkswagen’s North American unit, said in a ceremony at the plant on Thursday, July 10. “This is what is happening to the Beetle.”
The limited edition car comes in beige or powder blue and is adorned with whitewall tyres, a CD player with four speakers, chrome bumpers and other finishes. The price: 84,000 pesos, or about €7,210 at current exchange rates.
Despite its later status as a counterculture icon of the 1960s, the Beetle had been thought up in the mid-1930s by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. He ordered designer Ferdinand Porsche to come up with an affordable “People’s Car” (“Volkswagen” in German) that could seat two adults and three children.
Production took off after World War II [after the bombed factory was initially revived by a British army major]. The Beetle has been built in Mexico since 1978, Automotive News Europe said.
