Why was the Volkswagen Beetle of the 60's & 70's so popular?

In reviewing the VW Beetle there’s nothing about it that makes it a particularly compelling automobile vs it’s competitors, in fact it seems quite primitive technologically even for the 60’s, and yet it was wildly popular. Why? What was the magic?

It was so darn cute!

It was cheap, utilitarian, and it wasn’t made by the Big Three. Thus it became the ultimate anti-corporate, anti-establishment automobile.

Yet now it costs a fortune. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. Figure that out.

They were cheap, reliable, and relatively easy to maintain.
Marc

It was a piece of crap in every respect except traction in snow. There wern’t many cheap cars with the engine over the drive wheels. The key word was cheap. It became the car for kids going to college.

The thing I remember most was the smell of the cheap plastic. It had an odor that was unique to the car. You have to remember that back in the 60’s it wasn’t the norm to have multi-car families let alone a car for kids. Highways with only 4 lanes (2 each way) had little traffic and everybody drove in the right lane. The left lane was for passing. That’s how people were taught to drive. The left lane was actually called the passing lane. You could drive a bug without creating a traffic jam (it was underpowered).

There were two things that made the beetle succeed.
first off it was fairly simple and cheap to repair.
The second thing was that VW had a comprehensive network of dealers that stocked the parts necessary to repair the car no matter what was wrong with it.
Burned a valve? No problem, you can have your car back by noon.
Blew up the entire engine? No sweat, day after tomorrow.
Parts were in stock and available.

You mentioned reliability MGibson, that statement needs some qualification. VWs were reliable when it came to stuff like switches, connectors and the general electrical system. The engines on the other hand were shit when it came to long term reliability. At one independent I worked at the joke was most foreign car owners got a tune up every ten thousand miles, beetle owners got a valve job instead. We did in fact have owners that averaged one valve job every 10,000 miles. When you have a 3 quart oil capacity, and the system won’t pick up that last 1.5 quarts longevity is not going to be your strong suit.

Now compare that situation to how the brits brought cars to America. The engines were reliable (at least compared to a VW) . Unlike the Germans, the little stuff like electrical switches and alike failed with amazing regularity. Parts were hard to find, and expensive.
Bottom line the Germans did it right.

Bugs have charisma. They’re quirky-looking, and quirkily built. They have a unique sound. No cooling system means there’s less to go wrong. There’s no timing belt to worry about. The air filter is a bubble tank of oil. They’re easy and fun to work on. If you ever pull the engine, a couple of people can lift it and carry it around. You can lower the engine on a trolley jack, jack the car itself up and wheel the engine away. The heads and cylinders are all bolted together - you can change a cylinder if you need to.

If you’ve ever seen the Top Gear episode in Africa where they drove across the Makgadikgadi Pan in Botswana, the only car to make it without malfunction and/or modification was a Volkswagen Beetle. Hammond’s 1963 Opel Kadett also performed very well, but didn’t hold up as well as the Beetle. Cars 20 years younger, designed for rallying, had to be lightened, towed and patched up through the whole trip.

Horribly Unfair Ahistorical Generalization:

Old Bugs are Apple ][s and, therefore, Wozniak. They have their problems, but they’re easy to fix yourself and cheap enough nobody seriously cares if they’re unusable more often than a more expensive ‘real’ car. Plus, they have a very real cachet with a certain segment of the population. Owning one lets you meet the right people.

New Bugs are Macintoshes and, therefore, Jobs. They have fewer overall problems, but they’re closed boxes and expensive enough they better not be in the shop more often than a cheaper ‘real’ car. More to the point, they are ‘real’ cars now, and don’t have any real distinguishing features anymore. Plus, they’ve lost the original cachet and have gained a shiny candy gloss instead, which resonates with a larger segment of the population. Owning one lets you meet somewhat less interesting people.

Let the drive-by flaming begin. :slight_smile:

the downside was you had to rip the engine out to do almost anything. Of course, it was easy and quick to do but still. Also, you could drive one just about anywhere on the planet and there were parts and a mechanic that could fix it. If the US, you could go to a junkyard and get anything you needed to fix your bug for about $5 (including a used engine). It was a lot like Linux, if you had no money but a lot of patience, you could make a bug run forever.

I knew a lot of bug owners that took out the back seats and used a bean bag chair instead. sure, you were spam in a can in an accident but it was groovy.

And don’t forget the VW Microbus, with pretty much the same everything.

My dad bought one as a second family car in 1960. He got the idea from the military guy across the street who had been stationed in Germany in the 1950’s and had a '50something model. Plus, my dad was raising four kids, and money was tight. So, the cost was probably the biggest factor.

When I went to grad school in 1966, I needed a car. Had limited money. Bought a new '67 VW. Had few problems. But, the initial cost was why I bought.

Some people just like to make kids hit each other, I guess.

Cheapness

I had a '68 Bug in college. I had a piece of plywood covering the compartment behind the back seat. There were two 12" speakers mounted in it driven by a high-powered 8-track. It was a contributing factor to my tinnitus, I think.

Aside from what others have mentioned (price, repair, etc) I liked the small size. Remember that most cars in the 60s were giant gas-guzzlers, and could seat six comfortably; the li’l Beetle fit two or three, maybe four, with minimal trunk space. There was always a space small enough to squeeze into. It was comfy, and a clear alternative to the huge-cars of the era.

In my youth, I removed my 1968 Beetle’s engine, brought it downstairs to my basement bedroom, and rebuilt it. Just for the heck of it, I’ll add. Couldn’t do that with my Valari’s inline-six!

Those were the days. Now I pay people to change my oil for me. :frowning:

Here’s another factor that nobody mentioned. Top ad campaign of century? VW Beetle, of course.

Never let it be said that advertising doesn’t work, or that you never pay any attention to it. Good advertising of a good product can do wonders. When you have the best advertising campaign ever, when your advertising turns your product into a cultural icon that is featured in cartoons, articles, movies (Herbie the Love Bug), and the background of every hip image, when there are entire books put out of nothing but your ads (Think Small), then you know your ads made the product.

The other reasons mentioned are true and the ads wouldn’t have worked if the Beetle itself did have the attributes it did. But remember that the ads started before there were any such thing as hippies. Before The Beatles, for that matter. The Beetle was counterculture before the counterculture. Think small was a cheeky response to the Think logo of IBM. That gave the car perfect positioning to be picked up by those wanting to look as if they were outside the system, at least outside the system of Detroit iron.

Not that Detroit helped. What were the inexpensive compact cars that it was putting out at the time? The Corvair. The Falcon. The Studebaker Lark and the Plymouth Valiant. Now which would you buy?

I had a bug while in college and then a VW bus.

They were, as virtually everyone has mentioned, affordable, economical, relatively easy to maintain, dependable and fun to drive.

When I bought my bug, it was about three quarters the price of anything else on the lot. When everybody else was getting 10 and 11 miles per gallon, I was getting well better than double that. When others were spending hundreds on car repairs (and couldn’t possibly make their own repairs) I would be spending half to a third of what they were paying (assuming, 1. I even had that part to go wrong, or 2. I couldn’t break out my little copy of “An Idiots guide…” and make the repair myself for under $30). When other people were stuck in their drive way because of blizzards, floods or the like, my little bug got me almost anywhere I needed to go (not fast sometimes, but I got there).

My only two criticisms of the vehicle was the lack of a adaquate heater/defroster (which, like most VW owners, I remedied) and its tendency to vapor lock coming off mountain passes (in fact this regularly gave me a chance to sit and enjoy nature at the base of a mountain pass).

SQUEEE!

I saw an old style Bug on the side of the road about to be put on a flatbed truck due to mechanical problems and I still want one…cause it’s so durned cuuuute!

I had them for years. they were cheap and got 30 plus miles per gallon. You kept a scraper inside the car and scraped the inside of the windows til it finally warmed up enough. I used to deliberately drive through the snow ruts to knock them down. they were great on snow.Top speed about 65-70 .

Yup, any backyard tree mechanic could work on the thing. Ferdinand Porsche was a genius in designing a car that could be fixed using the simplest of tools. The engine was designed so that it would keep on running on the loosest of tolerances. I’ve got a '64 bug that I pretty much understand what everything on the car does and could take it apart, although putting it back together again has often caused me problems. I’ve rebuilt the engine myself, and am hardly a competent mechanic. I also have a '61 single cab and a '72 Karman Ghia, so you could consider my opinion biased.