Description
Author: Lawrence Meredith, Softbound, 16 Pages, ISBN: 9780750921336, 1st Edition, 1999
The VW Beetle is probably the most popular people's car of all time. It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche in the mid-1930s, and the project had powerful support from Adolf Hitler who wanted a cheap runabout for the German people. Sixty years later, this extraordinary small car, with its timeless looks and practical construction, still has an irresistible appeal and it is regarded by many as an automotive icon, The Beetle certainly belongs to that select group of cars that changed the world.
Laurence Meredith's pictorial history, which features many rarely seen period photographs of this remarkable vehicle, looks again at its conception and long career. He recalls Porsche's initial designs and the birth of the car in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the classic models and derivatives of the 1950s and 1960s — the split-window and oval-window Beetles with their characteristic sloping headlamps — and the most familiar models of the late 1960s and the 1970s with their big back windows and their 1300cc and 1500cc engines.
The last years of Beetle production in Germany are covered, and particular attention is paid to special editions like the GT, the Jeans Beetle - and the cabriolet. The book looks, too, at the underlying reasons for the car's phenomenal reputation, at the sales and marketing side of the story and at the enormity of the Beetle cult in Europe and North America. The author also considers the new front-wheel drive Beetle, which pays homage to the distinctive design of the original but has been conceived in an altogether different world.
