Have you ever owned a VW Beetle, either the older rear-engined, air-cooled one (1938-2003) or the new, front-engined, water-cooled one (1997-2018)? You probably loved it, is my guess, but I imagine there are folks who did not. My family had a microbus and that’s the car I learned to drive manuals on. Later, I owned a Vanagon. I do own a 1963 Porsche 356, so that’s quite close to the old Beetle.
I had a baby blue one. The engine in the rear. I tooled around in that thing 7or8 years. It was a 70 or so model. Can’t remember exactly. I loved that thing. I could go for days on $2 worth of gas. I swerved to miss a deer and rolled it. Nearly killed me.
It got struck by lightning one time. Kinda screwed it up.
Sometime around '78 or '79, my parents bought one for one of my older sisters. Mostly white with an off color, baby poop green, fender. I don’t remember much about it but I know it wasn’t around very long. I do recall that the engine noise didn’t sound at all healthy - kind of like an anemic lawn mower running over a tin can.
I had not heard that the New Beetle was being discontinued. I suppose it makes sense from the standpoint that cars in general are disappearing in favor of SUVs, trucks, crossovers, and the like.
Anyway, yes, the old Beetle was my first car, and I absolutely loved it. They were reliable, well-built, and easy to maintain. Never owned a New Beetle, but I rented one once and they’re quite a lot of fun to drive. IIRC, the New Beetle was never originally intended to be a production car, it was more of a whimsical concept car that VW designers dreamed up. There was so much public demand for it that VW relented and figured they actually had an opportunity here. IMHO the redesign in 2011 made it look even nicer, and apparently was intended in part to make it look a little sleeker and more appealing to male drivers.
I had two, one a '69 and I don’t remember the other. They were real ones, not the Golf with the redesigned exterior.
I did love those cars. They were all around excellent cars, and great in the snow. And they weren’t always losing the, what do you call it, the sweet smelling green stuff that’s always pouring out of other cars? Money, that’s it.
My first new car was a 1972 Beetle, which I purchased for $2000. It was Sumatra Green, my favorite color.
At the time, both of my brothers also drove Beetles. One car was yellow and was purchased with cash by Brother One when he came home from Vietnam. Brother Two drove a blue Beetle.
I wouldn’t call the cars reliable. They had problems frequently, but it was easy and cheap to get them worked on. People liked to work on them.
I bought a '65 VW Beetle, new, with sunroof and AM/FM radio, for $2060, bottom line, all taxes included. After 60,000 miles, it blew a rod and became worthless. So much for VW’s reliability.
It averaged 30MPG. My 2015 Honda gets 30MPG, but it’s vastly more reliable.
I own a 74 Beetle. I love it. It’s just a fun little car to drive.
I can definitely see why some people don’t like them, though. When you say “heat” and “Beetle” and “winter” all in the same sentence, people just laugh at you. Even though they did update the Beetle quite a few times over its long lifespan, it drives and handles about as well as you’d expect a car designed in the 1930s to handle. There’s no power steering and no power brakes, and every time I get in mine with my wife, I tell her that I’m putting the A/C on, while I roll down the window.
So yeah, it lacks a lot of the comforts of a modern car.
They do surprisingly well in the snow, probably because the engine weight is right over the back wheels.
Bought a used 1969 Beetle in grad school. Late in the model year version with tenths of mile added to the odometer!
Just the other day I remembered about the spare tire providing the pressure for the wiper fluid. Hadn’t thought about that in years.
Kept it running for quite a while. Moved to the land of snow and salt. This caused the cables that connected to the heater controls to rust up. Mrs. FtG insisted on selling it when FtGKid1 said one day: “It’s snowing inside the car.” (Flakes were blowing up out of the vents.)
Since the body was still in good shape, sold it for reasonable money. Did well on it.
Lots of family members had one. A brother had a '66. A sister had a crappy '64 and then later a Super Beetle. Another sister had one. Her husband was used to driving Corvettes. He kept destroying the clutches in it. Etc.
I never understood people buying the New Beetle. Just buy a Golf. Same platform but without the rounded off stuff limiting the interior space. Who cares what it looks like, it isn’t an actual Beetle.
Word, there. On a winter family road trip in our microbus, we froze in it. Pathetic heating system — although there was plenty of heat generated by the engine, the occupants didn’t get any of that heat.
That’s exactly it, and is why front-engined FWD cars also do well in snow.
My first car was a very beat-up '68 beetle that I bought in ‘74 for $600.00. I loved it because I didn’t have to rely on using my parents’ cars any more. The only other good thing about it, as others have said, is that it was easy to work on(a frequent requirement), and the parts were cheap.
My experience with the heat issue was the reverse of others here. I couldn’t shut it off. I don’t recall the details much, but there were cables that moved louvers or sliding doors along a channel that ran from the engine to the front of the car. The cables broke, the doors got hung-up, the doors broke in half, etc. Halfway through the third summer of broiling as I drove, I sold it to a cousin for $200.00 IIRC, and went into debt for a new car.
I had two of the old air-cooled ones. I don’t remember the exact years, but they were both mid-70’s production. I owned them in the early 80’s. Frankly, I was pretty fucking far from loving either one. Really, the only good things I can think of to say about them are that I got them cheaply and they got better gas mileage than most cars of the era. Since you, clearly, intend this thread as a love fest, I’ll stop there.
I drove a real Beetle for 13 years. For the most part I loved it. Some of my friends called it The Tardis, because I could fit so much stuff in it they said it must be bigger on the inside. I once carried a bass viol, a bassoon, and a bassoonist in it when I was in college (with nothing sticking out the window). When it needed a battery, but I had to wait a couple of weeks to scrape up the money I could push start it by myself - run beside it with the door open, then jump in and pop the clutch while it was still coasting. I could even pull the engine by myself and put it back in under 30 minutes.
Doesn’t even look like an actual Beetle. The Citroen 2CV looks more like a Beetle than that.
A buddy of mine had two of the "new beetle"s. He was an avid VW fan, having owned various models including GTIs and Cabriolets. The new beetle turned him off the brand because of build quality and reliability issues.
Me, I quite like the latest generation of beetles. I’d consider buying a gently used 2.0T model as a daily driver. It’s a shame they’ve discontinued the model line.
I’ve always liked the Beetle, old and new, but oddly it’s the only European retro I haven’t owned (yet). I owned a new Mini and the new Fiat 500. I thought the 2011 update did wonders for its looks.
My parents bought me a used '68 bug as sort of a high school graduation gift. I mounted two 12" speakers in the back on some plywood over the little storage area behind the rear seats. Combined with a Pioneer 8-track, I could really crank up the tunes!
I had my most unusual accident in that car. I was pulling into the garage after washing it and my foot slipped off the brake and I smashed into our full-sized freezer. You should’ve seen the look on my dad’s face when he came out of the house to see what happened. My mom was secretly pleased since she had been lobbying for a new freezer for awhile. The damage to the front of the bug wasn’t too bad, but I had to use a bungie cord to secure the hood after that.
My first car was '67 Beetle my parents had bought new ~10yrs earlier. I later had a '73 convertible ca. mid 80’s. Iconic, lovable in their way obviously, but underpowered by any reasonable standard and dangerous.
But the later generation Beetle is just not a significant car at all except insofar as it (weakly) evokes the original, IMO.
During the 1970s, my parents owned several Beetles along with a squareback. I spent a lot of time in the backseat of those Beetles, which I hated because there wasn’t any air-conditioning, nor did the rear windows open. My father did quite a bit of maintenance on the VW engines, helped by its simplicity. And we drove the squareback to Disney World from our Connecticut home. This trip included me, my brother, our parents, an adult married cousin and his wife along with their kid. I remember that it seemed enormous to me at the time, but then I saw one a few years ago and was amazed at how tiny it is in reality.
And once when my parents dragged us to the VW dealer in New Haven, they had a Herbie go-kart on the showroom floor, with a gas lawnmower engine. My brother and I made such a fuss that they actually bought it for us. (I think it cost several hundred dollars, so this was not cheap.) We had that for several years, until we got bored with it.
We had an oval window '57 when I was in grade school. I thought it was interesting that my dad was a Volks fan after having been shot by the Germans. I remember the semaphore indicators on the side. We could flip them up with our fingers, but they weren’t hooked up. A couple of years later we got a ‘61. We took family vacations in that thing all over the country. How my sis and I kept from killing each other I don’t know. Years later I got the car and abused it terribly. I still don’t know how I tolerated being folded up in that thing at 6’3’. My sister got a Super Beetle and drove it til it rusted away. She still waxes nostalgic over wing windows.
Dad was a member of a VW club when I was little and there were a few in the family. I remember lying across the back seat of one at night on a trip home during a thunderstorm.
One of my sisters owned one on which the trunk latch had broken so the lid needed to be tied down. That may have been the same one which she drove home one afternoon without noticing it was on fire.
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