Beetle's About!

ASM Engineer Michael Hughes blogs about the joys of owning a forty-year old VW Beetle and how the atypically German car actually has a colourful English heritage.

The long summer evenings lend themselves to escaping the television and taking my forty year old VW Beetle for a gentle amble round the leafy lanes of Cheshire.

I have owned the car for a long time, running it as my first car for nearly a decade before replacing it. But I just couldn’t part with this thoroughly reliable beast even though it had started to look a little frayed around the edges.

I had offers to buy it but that only encouraged me to keep it. I therefore decided to have it restored professionally - a project which lasted for a little over two years. It returned to home looking like a shiny new vehicle which now appears on dry days or at the occasional Classic Car show.

But how did this vehicle become iconic being manufactured across different continents of the world for forty plus years and become the centre for films Walt Disney has made based on the character ‘Herbie’? It’s not exactly an attractive or practical vehicle yet it still doesn’t look out of place on our roads. Its origins as the “Peoples Car” for the German people before the Second World War is well documented but the destruction of the factory at Wolfsburg at the end of the war may well have seen its demise.

What may not be known is that it was left to a British Army major to organise the restarting of production after the end of the Second World War. Major Ivan Hirst of the Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineers was responsible for the Beetle project under British Administration and he restarted the production of the Beetle car. Beetle production was eventually passed back to German Heinz Nordhoff to organize production. He quickly increased production and by 1955 the one millionth beetle had come off the assembly line.

Taking the Beetle to Classic Car Shows is always interesting. Many people approach you to recall the days when they had a Beetle and discuss how reliable it was and what fun to drive. They always were reluctant to part with it but growing families meant it was no longer practical to keep it.

I have been asked by children if this is “Herbie” from the films but explained that it is Herbie’s first cousin. This has satisfied the young inquiring mind. Shortly after the launch of the last Herbie film children wanted their photograph standing by my Beetle because, being Pastel White, it is close to the colour of Herbie in the film.

The fun for me is in owning the car for so long as well as the fact it is so reliable. It is always quick to start. It also a reminder that cars of its era are very basic and that car technology has come a long way since my Beetle was built.