The last old-style Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line at Puebla, Mexico on Wednesday, 30 Jul 2003.This event was 70 years after Adolf Hitler's government introduced Germans to a two-door passenger car that became an icon around the globe. Ferdinand Porsche, famed auto architect, designed the Beetle.
Competition from newer compacts and a Mexican government decision to phase out two-door taxis led Volkswagen to shut down its only remaining "bug" production line. This plant was located 65 miles southeast of Mexico City.
Workers painstakingly crafted the final car: a baby-blue version marked No. 21,529,464.This”end-of-the-line” car will go to a museum in Wolfsburg, Germany, home of VW headquarters. Adorned with a Mexican flag made of flowers, the car was serenaded by a mariachi band playing "El Rey," or "The King."
The 300 employees working on the bug assembly line will be reassigned to other departments at the factory, which also produces Jettas and the modern version of the Beetle.
Volkswagen produced 3,000 "last-edition" bugs to be sold at Mexican dealerships for $8,000 -- a few hundred dollars more than the normal price. The design stays faithful to the original model with a few minor changes, including whitewall tires and a compact-disc player. (some info from above came from AP)
The end of production has sparked a fierce international battle among collectors. In the summer of 1958, I was working as a greens keeper at the Dedham Country and Polo Club-the best summer job I ever had. I did not have a car and was a junior in college at Tufts Univ in Medford, Mass. I either had to be driven, thumb a ride or take the MTA to school or work!
My best friend at work on the golf course was a guy named Don, who was going to Boston College and was in the Army ROTC. He had joined the reserves in his junior year and had two extra years of pay when he got commissioned, but he could have ended up in Lebanon at the time. Don was a very astute young man at everything.
One early morning, I walked into work after hitching a ride and I saw this shiny strange small black “funny looking” car that I had never seen before sitting on the grass next to the driveway.
I asked Don “what is this?”
He said “It’s my new car!”
Yeh! I said “but, what do you call it?”
He said “It’s a German Volkswagen”.
He proceeded to show me all the features of the car. He showed me the small (35HP) four cylinder air cooled (no radiator) engine in the back! The trunk was under the front hood with the gas tank (and its large gas cap) ahead of it. The tank had a large screw cap; It had bucket seats in the front and a regular long single seat in the back. Both were done in red leatherette.
The small car jack was strapped under the back seat and fit in a slot in the middle of the car on both sides. You could lift the whole side of the car so that tire rotation was easy. The four tires and spare Dunlop whitewalls were rotated every 3000 miles.
Torsion bars were used in the suspension. When the car was suspended on a lift the wheels angled in like they were pigeon-toed. The selling point was that the car only cost $1615.00 dollars brand spanking new.
I thought about it and decided to buy one of these by getting a car loan at Boston 5 Cent Savings Bank in Rozzie Square for $1000 after putting the balance in a down payment. The loan payments were about $50- $60 per month for two years.
I was looking for a car at the time since I was graduating from college in a year and I was in Air Force ROTC so I was guaranteed a job. I proceeded to find out more information about this Volkswagen car! I called up “Hansen- Macffey” Auto Dealership in Needham which was the only one in the area. I had never seen a Volkswagen before I saw Don’s.
I made an appointment and told a salesman I wanted to buy a new 1959 Volkswagen. The salesperson said, “Ok it’s $1615.00 dollars with a $100 down and it will take 6 months to order.”
“What color do you want?”
“I want black with red leather interior and whitewall tires”.
The car came with a Blaupunkt AM radio. I gave him a $100 deposit. The salesman said they would give me a call when the car arrived. I went back to college at Tufts University. Come Spring and they called, “The car was ready for pickup.” Boy, was I excited!
I can still close my eyes and smell the newness of the VW as I drove home to my parent’s home in Rozzie. For the next three months of my last semester at Tufts, I drove my bug joyfully to and from school savoring every mile of the Rozzie to Medford trip. I was beside myself as I “Turtle waxed” and polished the black jewel and “Brillo” steel wooled the whitewalls to a bright white.
An “incident” happened with my bug however which gave me severe heartburn. In fact, I still get anxious over it these forty three years later when I think about the prank perpetuated on me that spring on the Tufts campus.
I had always parked the VW on the Main street across from the Engineering Dept. in nearly the same spot so l could gaze with admiration at it from a vantage point while in certain classes. One day, when I came back from a lab, I looked out the window and couldn’t see my VW at all! It was gone!
“Whoa! What the hell is going on? ” I thought as I ran out in the street. My VW was on the sidewalk behind a parked car that was in my parking place. My car weighed 1600 lbs. Some of my classmates obviously lifted the VW up and carried it over to the sidewalk.
On top of that I couldn’t drive it off because of a dirt banking. How I got it back on the street was no easy task. It’s still a blur in my mind, as I was so angered. Regardless, my love affair still went on. The bug had a floor shift with four speeds forward and one reverse. The pull up hand brake was on the floor next to shift stick.
The heater in the car ran off the manifold with a faucet-type knob. The radio was magnificent! How I loved that car! I drove it for two years! 52,000 miles on original five tires.
It had no gas gauge, but it did have a reserve tank. When you had a little more than a gallon of gas left, the car would sputter. All you had to do was throw the reserve switch and bingo … you could drive 30 miles or better more. The car got around 39 highway miles to the gallon and averaged in the city around 32 miles to the gallon. It had a rear engine so all the weight was in the back! It had only four cylinders.
I changed the oil regularly and rotated all five tires every 3 thousand miles and the car was a dream. The only disadvantages were when you were going around 70 miles an hour the wind would buffet it a little bit; and it had an electric motor for the windshield wipers and in winter , if ice or snow froze on windshield you had to defrost before you ran wipers or the motor would burn up.!
You could move the front seats up so far that I found it nice to sit in the back seat with my feet up doing whatever I wanted … watch the stars, a movie at a drive-in, etc. If it got cold, the manifold heater worked like a charm! The VW was very well made and an air tight car. You had to open a window to close the door. They said it would float. I did not put that to the test!
A seven-foot giant like former NBA great Wilt Chamberlan could sit in the “bug”. The Beetle had superior traction. Many times when I was driving to MIT (Graduate School) in a snowstorm, I didn’t need snow-tires on the back (the engine weight was on rear) and it drove like a dream! I put ski-racks on the slanted back and often went skiing at Pleasant Mountain, in Bridgeton, Maine.
When I sold the car in 1962 … I ended up getting $1400.00 for it. This meant that I drove it for two years and it only cost me $100 per year. I changed the oil myself since it was easy and the tires remained in great shape!
I probably sold hundreds of them because everyone I showed the car to got the whole pitch of why I LOVED THAT CAR! I just couldn’t say enough about it!
Sure enough, I’m watching TV and discovered the Smithsonian just put a 1959 Volkswagen in its museum! Plus- I found out that Charles Lindberg, the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, used one of these 1959 Beetles and drove it across 4 continents.
Had I not had so many children, I would still be driving it!
WILK CONTRIBUTED TO THIS PIECE
Published in the September 2003 Issue of the Roslindale, MA "Bulletin"
