On January 19, 1978, melancholy was the order of the day in Emden: a Beetle rolled off the assembly line at the Volkswagen factory, a very special one. It was the last model to be produced in Germany. An era came to an end.
The car was still manufactured in Mexico until 2003, but when the After the end of production in this country, it is no longer suitable as a symbol for “Made in Germany”. But the VW Beetle remains popular to this day.
The career of the Beetle began in the darkest phase of German history as an express wish of Adolf Hitler: the German people should be able to drive an affordable, robust car. This is what the dictator demanded, among other things, at the International Automobile and Motorcycle Show in Berlin in the early 1930s.
On behalf of the Reich Association of the German Automobile Industry, designer Ferdinand Porsche got to work and was able to present the first prototype of such a “Volkswagen” as early as 1935: a small car with a rounded bonnet and humped rear end. It was the birth of a car that would have a worldwide career in the following decades: the VW Beetle.
More than 20 million VW Beetles were built
Initially known under the name KdF-Wagen (“Strength through Joy”), the vehicle received the official name “Volkswagen” after the war, model “Type 1”. The purpose-built Volkswagen factory in what is now Wolfsburg was mainly occupied with the construction of military vehicles until the end of the Second World War. It only went into mass production of the Beetle after 1945. At the latest in the period of the economic miracle, the car had its breakthrough.
Over the next few decades, well over 20 million Beetles rolled off the production line at multiple locations around the world, until production finally ceased in 2003. It was the best-selling car of all time until the VW Golf, the successor to the Beetle, secured this title in 2002.
But the Beetle remains unforgotten: as the first family car, as a symbol of Germany’s ups and downs, as a popular figure, as a film star, as an advertising icon, as an indestructible companion for entire generations of motorists.
And the “Type 1” lives on, it runs and runs and runs, as a legendary VW advertisement says: According to the Federal Motor Vehicle Office, there are still far more than 30,000 Beetles on German roads.
Click through the photo gallery above and see photos from more than eight decades of VW Beetles.
Editor’s note: This photo series was first published in 2020 and was updated to mark the end of production of the Beetle in Germany 45 years ago.