{"id":23785,"date":"2019-05-21T14:39:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T18:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=23785"},"modified":"2019-05-22T14:43:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T18:43:14","slug":"payne-driving-down-memory-lane-in-the-last-volkswagen-bug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/payne-driving-down-memory-lane-in-the-last-volkswagen-bug","title":{"rendered":"Payne: Driving down memory lane in the last Volkswagen Bug"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/6ac20f8b-ea4e-4c17-b542-f4c8d630675e-bug_fr-flowers2.JPG?width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"Seventy years after it came to the U.S., the VW Beetle is retiring -- for the second time (the first retirement came in 1978). The 2019 Beetle prowled the Penn State campus just as the first Beetles did when they took the country by storm in the 1960s.\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div><p><em>Seventy years after it came to the U.S., the VW Beetle is retiring &#8212; for the second time (the first retirement came in 1978). The 2019 Beetle prowled the Penn State campus just as the first Beetles did when they took the country by storm in the 1960s.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: Henry Payne, The Detroit News)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable-p-1 p-text\">The Bug has been squashed. Again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable-p-2 p-text\">As the iconic Volkswagen retires from the U.S.\u00a0market for the second time in 40 years, I spent a week driving down memory lane with the final model, the 2019 New Beetle. I took it to its American roots \u2014\u00a0a college campus \u2014 for my niece\u2019s Penn State graduation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Stylish and peppy, my Final Edition front-engine Beetle has come a long way from the 1960s Beetles that captured America\u2019s youth. Simple and non-ostentatious, those so-called Type 1 Bugs were everywhere on university lots,\u00a0the affordable first cars of generation Baby Boomer.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-RyvxmLU6138\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\"><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/a9e9557b-0b57-41ef-a45a-7e797da0fc73-2019_Beetle_Final_Edition--8693.jpg?crop=1523,773,x77,y69&amp;width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"The  2019 Volkswagen Final Edition.\" width=\"540\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/a9e9557b-0b57-41ef-a45a-7e797da0fc73-2019_Beetle_Final_Edition--8693.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/a9e9557b-0b57-41ef-a45a-7e797da0fc73-2019_Beetle_Final_Edition--8693.jpg?width=500&amp;height=281\" \/><em>The 2019 Volkswagen Final Edition.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: Volkswagen)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/aside>\n<div class=\"clearfix\">The tan 2019 Bug I drove\u00a0was a curiosity at Penn State; it was\u00a0a fashion statement that has outlived its fashion. It was also a gem, and its demise opens a flood of memories to late-boomers like me \u2014\u00a0as it surely did the early-boomers who mourned the passing of the rear-engine Bug in 1978.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Although other classics from the 1960s golden era of the automobile \u2014 Mustangs, Camaros, Challengers, Mini Coopers\u00a0\u2014 have proved more sustainable than Beetle,\u00a0it shares something with them. It&#8217;s more than an automobile. It\u2019s part of the cultural fabric.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Detroiters mark decades by Tigers teams, couples mark sentimental occasions with favorite ballads. I\u00a0mark my years with Beetles.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-RyvxmLVvKZY\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\"><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/b2aa6f5d-6e69-41b1-943f-ebb439c2681c-herbie.jpg?width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"Lynn Anderson of Clinton Township stands by her prized possession, a 1965 replica of Herbie the Love Bug, in 2015. <\/div>\n\n\" width=\"540\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/b2aa6f5d-6e69-41b1-943f-ebb439c2681c-herbie.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/b2aa6f5d-6e69-41b1-943f-ebb439c2681c-herbie.jpg?width=500&amp;height=346\" \/><em>Lynn Anderson of Clinton Township stands by her prized possession, a 1965 replica of Herbie the Love Bug, in 2015.\u00a0\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: Max Ortiz, The Detroit News)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<div class=\"clearfix\">My first memory of the creature is at the movies.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">I come from a family of racers, and \u201cHerbie the Love Bug\u201d was right up our alley. When Herbie hit the screens in 1968, we were there. I adored the quirky car. It was the ultimate underdog among sleek competitors and the dastardly Peter Thorndyke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">I knew nothing at the time about the Bug\u2019s roots in Hitler\u2019s Germany. The Fuhrer\u2019s brainchild for an affordable \u201cpeople\u2019s car\u201d \u2014 hence, Volkswagen \u2014\u00a0was contracted to Ferdinand Porsche. Porsche himself was a difficult, mad genius whose rear-engine, bug-like design was the template for millions of Beetles to follow.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-RyvxmLUGpwM\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\"><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/b600565c-da59-46c0-8354-16e6a2671164-1966-Beetle.jpg?width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"A couple cruises in a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle during the 2015 Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise near  9 Mile  in Ferndale.\" width=\"540\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/b600565c-da59-46c0-8354-16e6a2671164-1966-Beetle.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/b600565c-da59-46c0-8354-16e6a2671164-1966-Beetle.jpg?width=500&amp;height=346\" \/><em>A couple cruises in a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle during the 2015 Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise near 9 Mile in Ferndale.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: Robin Buckson, The Detroit News)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/aside>\n<div class=\"clearfix\">I doubt the students at Penn State who smiled at the passing Bug know its Third Reich history either.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">That\u2019s because it was a Brit\u00a0who ultimately brought the Bug to the world. In decimated\u00a0post-war Germany, Hitler-partner Porsche (his son Ferdinand would ultimately start the sports car company that bears that name) was deemed by occupying American forces to be too radioactive to lead the company he started.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">British Army Maj.\u00a0Ivan Hiss rescued the Volkswagen factory\u00a0and installed an executive team that would export Bug to the U.S. in 1949. It would become as American as apple pie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Credit New York\u2019s Doyle, Dane, and Bernbach ad agency. With self-deprecating slogans like \u201cAnd if you run out of gas it\u2019s easy to push,\u201d the Beetle was irresistible. It is featured in Paul Ingrassia\u2019s epic book, \u201cEngines of Change,\u201d as one of the 15 cars (alongside\u00a0the Model T, Jeep\u00a0and Corvette) that changed America.<\/p>\n<div id=\"ad-position-60\" class=\"partner-placement partner-spike partner-placement-visible\" data-ad-placement=\"native-article_link\" data-ad-sizes=\"[&quot;fluid&quot;,[3,3], [2,6]]\" data-monetization-id=\"native-article_link\" data-monetization-sizes=\"fluid,3,3,2,6\">\n<div id=\"ad-slot-7103-mi-detroit-C1561-native-article_link-money-autos-7\" class=\"ad-slot\" data-google-query-id=\"CLerusXkr-ICFRA5TwodJwgAyw\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/mi-detroit-C1561\/native-article_link\/money\/autos_1__container__\">\n<div class=\"tlod\">\n<div class=\"tl-unit-mid-article\">\n<div class=\"tl-transparent\">The title of Ingrassia\u2019s Bug chapter: \u201cVolkswagen\u2019s long and winding road from Hitler\u2019s cars to hippie icons.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">I didn\u2019t know many hippies as I came of age in the &#8217;70s, but I knew plenty of fellow 16-year-olds who cut their teeth on the Beetle. Bugs were as cute as Herbie. But man, that manual transmission\u00a0saw some ugly shifting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\"><em>GROOOOONCH!<\/em>\u00a0The sound is still stuck in my head as my friends wrestled the shifter that grew from the\u00a0floor like a cornstalk, mangling shifts as they worked the clutch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">\u201cWhat\u2019s a clutch?\u201d millennials might ask today.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">My 2019 Bug is available only as an six-speed automatic, and it\u2019s smooth as silk. On a rainy weekend at Penn State, I would toggle Sport mode in the Beetle (an electronic gizmo that would be as alien to Ferdinand Porsche as hyperspace in Han\u00a0Solo\u2019s Millennium Falcon) and shoot out of a green light, the automatic transmission effortlessly swapping cogs as the front wheels clawed at the wet payment for traction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Front-wheel drive? The concept was as alien to the original Type 1 Bug as an automatic transmission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">By the late 1970s, governments were panicking over the OPEC-induced oil crisis and forcing manufacturers to make more fuel-efficient cars. VW developed the front-wheel drive, four-door Golf hatchback, which also happened to be more utilitarian than the two-door Bug and its cramped rear seat.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-RyvxmLU0n90\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\"><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/d51b29f4-a63b-45f0-b843-b1e133d5d29b-1967-Beetle.jpg?width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"This 1967 Volkswagen Beetle was bought in 1966 in Riverside, California.  Owner Kathleen Brooks has driven it more than 350,000 miles and recently had it restored. \" width=\"540\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/d51b29f4-a63b-45f0-b843-b1e133d5d29b-1967-Beetle.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/d51b29f4-a63b-45f0-b843-b1e133d5d29b-1967-Beetle.jpg?width=500&amp;height=333\" \/><em>This 1967 Volkswagen Beetle was bought in 1966 in Riverside, California. Owner Kathleen Brooks has driven it more than 350,000 miles and recently had it restored.\u00a0\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: Rick Loomis, Volkswagen)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">As the Golf thrived, the Bug wilted. VW eventually put it put to pasture in 1978 (it continued production in Mexico until 2003 for foreign markets).<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Then VW marketers heard the sighs of late-boomers like me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">In 1996, the Bug kicked off a Decade of Nostalgia that included retro redesigns of cars including the Mustang, Camaro, Mini, Ford Thunderbird and more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Now a fashion statement instead of a mass-market car, the New Beetle\u00a0was\u00a0aimed at women, complete with dashboard flower vase and bright colors right out of my wife\u2019s spring dress collection. The New Beetle was still affordable and\u00a0sold well initially. Ironically, it was based on the Golf chassis that had killed the original Type 1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">The New Beetle also shares the Golf\u2019s peppy\u00a02.0-liter, 174-horse turbo-4, a long way from the Type 1\u2019s 30-horsepower hamster wheel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">But for all its Golf underpinnings, the New Beetle is unmistakably a Bug. Everything is cute and round:\u00a0headlights, fenders, shifter base, speakers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">The New Beetle could never expand its female demographic to us motorhead males, though goodness knows the carmaker tried. I took a bright-yellow and black New Beetle to the race track known as the Autobahn in 2014. Dubbed the \u201cBumblebee\u201d \u2013 a Bug with a stinger \u2013 it was stuffed with the Golf GTI\u2019s 210-horse four-banger. It was a blast. But what motorhead would pass up a GTI for a Bumblebee?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Dressing it in Herbie\u2019s red and blue racing stripes and No. 53 might have been a better idea.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-RyvxmLUGCYY\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\"><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/26522ab5-c350-4ad4-8170-baa97cf5dff1-Historic_Beetle-Large-2282.jpg?width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"A VW Beetle Cabriolet is shown in 1949, the first year Beetles were sold in the U.S.\" width=\"540\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/26522ab5-c350-4ad4-8170-baa97cf5dff1-Historic_Beetle-Large-2282.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/16\/PDTN\/26522ab5-c350-4ad4-8170-baa97cf5dff1-Historic_Beetle-Large-2282.jpg?width=500&amp;height=318\" \/><em>A VW Beetle Cabriolet is shown in 1949, the first year Beetles were sold in the U.S.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: Volkswagen)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/aside>\n<div class=\"clearfix\">And so the second-generation New Beetle has come to its natural end. With leather seats, sunroof, push-button start and modern gizmos like blind-spot assist, the 2019 Final Edition is a bargain at $26,000,\u00a0just like its grandfather. Get it while you can.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Five years ago, on the Beetle\u2019s 65th anniversary, I test-drove a 1949 Type 1 Beetle,\u00a0one of the first of its kind sold in the United States. For $1,268 new, it had roll-up windows, no air-conditioning\u00a0and non-adjustable cloth seats. Zero-60?\u00a028 seconds. Top speed? 68 mph. It\u2019s hard to imagine these things once were ubiquitous on American roads.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">And it\u2019s also hard to imagine American roads without them. So long, Bug. Something tells me we\u2019ll see another version of you someday.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-RyvxmLUCZYM\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\"><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/17\/PDTN\/0725cfb3-a40d-41bc-b942-0fbc20994844-tdndc5-5qxv41s1gfq1dgilafm7_original.jpg?crop=2000,1372,x0,y0&amp;width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"Jerry Adams, 3, plays with a toy Volkswagen Beetle while his dad's 1973 convertible Super Beatle is parked behind him in Bloomfield Hills during the Woodward Dream Cruise in this file photo from August 16, 2008.\" width=\"540\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/17\/PDTN\/0725cfb3-a40d-41bc-b942-0fbc20994844-tdndc5-5qxv41s1gfq1dgilafm7_original.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/authoring\/2019\/05\/17\/PDTN\/0725cfb3-a40d-41bc-b942-0fbc20994844-tdndc5-5qxv41s1gfq1dgilafm7_original.jpg?width=500&amp;height=343\" \/><em>Jerry Adams, 3, plays with a toy Volkswagen Beetle while his dad&#8217;s 1973 convertible Super Beatle is parked behind him in Bloomfield Hills during the Woodward Dream Cruise in this file photo from August 16, 2008.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: Elizabeth Conley, The Detroit News, File)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seventy years after it came to the U.S., the VW Beetle is retiring &#8212; for the second time (the first retirement came in 1978). The 2019 Beetle prowled the Penn State campus just as the first Beetles did when they took the country by storm in the 1960s.\u00a0(Photo: Henry Payne, The Detroit News) The Bug [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}