Someone Stop These Ninjas Cutting Onions: Farewell, Beetle, The Original People's Car

• The company released an animated video and held a stunning display at Times Square.
• Beetle is the longest-running single-platform nameplate.
• Over 23 million Beetles have been sold in over 7 decades.
• VW ID.3 is the spiritual successor to the Beetle.

Volkswagen of America commemorated the end of the iconic Beetle at Times Square in New York City on New Year’s eve. The company’s various videos, including a 90-second one entitled The Last Mile, were played at Times Square. The Beetle has been around for eight decades, selling over 23 million cars worldwide. Going forward, Volkswagen will continue to focus on electric vehicles (EVs). Hints of the company’s future plans were also showcased at the Times Square event. Its future lineup includes the ID range of electric vehicles and the 2020 Atlas Cross Sport utility vehicle. 

The Last Mile features American celebrities and notable Beetle owners such as Andy Cohen. Pro Musica Youth Chorus' cover of Let It Be  by the Beatles plays in the background as a child's father brings home a Beetle. The video shows the child’s stages of growing up, getting married, and growing old. In his final drive, the owner of the Beetle is contemplating a scenery when his car becomes sentient and takes off into the horizon. It passes through a crowd of people, some of whom are animated versions of celebrities. The late Andy Warhol can be seen photographing the Beetle as it passes by. With a crowd of fans in its rear view mirror, the Beetle takes to the sky and turns into a firefly. At the end of the video, the fascia of the ID.3 electric vehicle is displayed with the message ‘Where one road ends, another begins.’

The Beetle is one of the most memorable names in Volkswagen’s history. The car finds its roots in Nazi Germany, where Adolf Hitler commissioned Ferdinand Porsche to create the people’s car in Germany. Much of the original documents of the Beetle’s prototypes were lost in the bombing of its Stuttgart factory during World War II. Allied armed forces discovered the factory but deemed the car economically unviable. 

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When British Army officer Major Ivan Hirst was tasked with removing an unexploded bomb from the factory, he understood its employment potential at a time when Germany was in dire straits. He helped place an order for 20,000 cars for the British military. By 1945, more than a thousand Beetles had been produced in the factory.

Volkswagen’s history is intertwined with the Beetle. In 1974, the company launched another iconic people’s car, the Golf Mk1. The ID.3 is Volkswagen’s people car of the future -- a spiritual successor to the Beetle and Golf. You can read our story about the ID.3’s succession as the mass-market people’s Volkswagen here. VW had commenced the car’s production in November 2019. The carmaker’s Zwickau plant was converted to produce electric cars for an investment of EUR 1.2 billion (approx Rs 9,440 crore). The first deliveries will begin in Europe in early-2020. Prices of the ID.3 are expected to start from EUR 30,000 (Rs 23.62 lakh).