Cool trivia! I own a 1963 Porsche 356. I never knew Herbie from The Love Bug was also a ‘63!
For deciding which car to use in The Love Bug (1968), producer/writer Bill Walsh set up an auto audition by parking several small automobiles near the Disney Studio commissary.
“As the employees passed by on their way to lunch,” Bill Walsh recalled, “they looked at the little cars, kicked the tires, and turned the steering wheels. But everybody who went by patted the Volkswagen. They didn’t pat the other cars, which was indicative. The VW had a personality of its own that reached out and embraced people. Thus, we found our star.” The new car-star was a 1963 sunroof-model 1200 Volkswagen Beetle, defined by Volkswagen as the Type 1.
The VW Type 2 was the Transporter, also known as the Bus, the Microbus, or the Kombi.