Meet The Beetle |
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Yes, Herbie's back. He's
pumped up and he means business. The old Beetle was a happy little machine that didn't have a heater, or a defroster, or head-room, or a proper backseat--or an engine. But it was cheap (about $800 in 1949, the car's first year of production), and, okay, awfully cute. Beetlemania fizzled out by 1977, but the car was so unforgettably cute that when VW's West Coast design team sat sketching one day in 1993, out popped the Beetle of the future. Volkswagen executives back home in Wolfsburg, Germany, gave the stateside dreamers the green light to build a show car for the 1994 North American Auto Show in Detroit. Somewhere along the line, from swamped phone lines, begging to buy one, to large crowds cramping to get a look, concept became reality. The New Beetle is amazingly true to the promise of the show car and to its Flower Power heritage. . . . |
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Exploring the New Beetle, from front to back. |