The Volkswagen Beetle is perhaps the most recognizable car ever manufactured. When it made its debut in the United States in 1949 it was an anomaly in a sea of whales on the American roadway. Compared to chrome-infested American cars the “bug” was a revelation—albeit a homely one. The American car-buying public, weary of Detroit’s postwar onslaught of excess, began buying the car in record numbers and would continue to do so for decades. Its minimal maintenance and good gas mileage would set the standard for the economy car worldwide.
The specter of Germany’s Volkswagen at its heels changed the face of the American automobile. Yet while Volkswagen was telling its buyers that beauty was in the eye of the beholder, it did give them alternatives: VW came up with not only the Microbus but the Karmann Ghia and the Type III Notchback, Squareback, and Fastback models.
All this and more—who should be credited with the design of the distinctive Karmann Ghia; is the Hebmuller cabriolet the most beautiful Volkswagen of them all—is explored in this fast- paced, colorful volume on the legendary car manufacturer.
The Beetle became an American icon in its thirty-year history. And now Volkswagen, attempting to reintroduce car economy as well as novelty (or the nostalgia for it) has just debuted the New Beetle. Can the extraordinary love affair between car and country be rekindled?