In Bolivia, it was known as Peta, or “The Turtle.” In Indonesia, it was dubbed Kodak, or “The Frog.” It starred in the 1969 movie The Love Bug and four Herbie sequels. It even brought a smile to the face of Adolf Hitler.
It was and still is the unmistakable Volkswagen Beetle.
Ferdinand Porsche is credited with finalizing the car’s design in 1938, although who deserves credit for the original concept is disputed.
Volkswagen — “the people’s car” in German — was produced in response to Hitler’s desire for a practical, inexpensive vehicle for the country’s new road system. He was given the first convertible model built in 1938. World War II halted civilian production.
On Feb. 17, 1972, the 15,007,034th Beetle rolled off the assembly line in Wolfsburg, Germany, overtaking the production record long held by the Ford Model T. By the time production ended in 2003, more than 21 million had been built. A “new” stylized Beetle was produced from 1997 to 2019.
Garrison resident Dan Janczewski’s first car was a 1947 Willys Jeep which he purchased from war surplus when he was 18. “My father thought it was great because it was a military jeep with a governor — it couldn’t go too fast,” he recalls.
He later owned a new Beetle, but it was the original “bug” that captured his imagination. “The 2000 model was cool; it was a diesel,” he says. “But I wanted to know what the old one, the classic, was like.”
His 1968 Beetle has a distinct feel. “I like the way it rides; you bop around,” he says. “It makes you feel like a kid!”
He also values the car’s simplicity. Everything is manual, including the four-on-the-floor transmission. “It brings you back to the days when you really had to watch the road,” he says. “You can’t be fooling around with your phone.”
Besides the tires, everything on Janczewski’s VW is original, from the zenith blue paint and black vinyl seats to the crank windows and the German AM transistor radio. It is rated at up to 65 mph, but Janczewski says he doesn’t like to “push it” much past 50. He estimates the gas mileage to be in the high 20 mpg, with a catch.
“It calls for regular lead gas, 91 octane, which isn’t made anymore,” he says. “My mechanic has me buy high-test and I put a treatment in to remove the ethanol.”
The Specs
Assembly: Wolfsburg and four other German cities, 15 other countries
Production years: 1938 to 2003
Total Production: 21,529,464
Body: 2-door and 2-door convertible
Layout: rear-engine, rear-wheel drive
Engine: 4 cylinder, 1100 to 1600 cc, air-cooled
Transmission: 4-speed manual, 4- and 3-speed semi-automatic
Curb weight: 1,760 to 1,850 pounds
Fuel economy: High 20s mpg
Top speed: 65 mph
Although the air-cooled engine starts right up in cold weather, Janczewski says it takes 15 to 20 minutes for the heater to kick in. While he avoids salt-covered roads in winter, having the engine in the rear means the bug handles well in snow.
His Beetle may not enjoy Herbie’s celebrity status, but it’s had some brushes with fame. “Apple TV wanted to buy it,” he says. “And it almost appeared in HBO’s White House Plumbers with Woody Harrelson and Nashville, but the deals didn’t materialize.”
The Beetle has seen both sides of the country. It was purchased new, in Monrovia, California, in 1968. The owner kept it for 12 years before trading it in to a VW dealer who stored it for 20 years. When the dealer died in 2000, the car was auctioned and shipped to Columbia, South Carolina. Janczewski bought it in 2004 for $6,500 and had it shipped to Pennsylvania, where he lived at the time.
He has entered the VW in shows in Pennsylvania and at Bear Mountain State Park and only drives it a few hundred miles a year. His favorite outing is an annual 60-mile rally that begins in Congers in Rockland County, and features just one type of car — the VW Beetle.
The car has obviously impacted Janczewski; his email address begins with oldbug68.
I have a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle in the same color. It was a great car. It cost $2 to fill up and went forever on a tank. [via Facebook]
I had a ’69 in yellow. I loved that car. [via Facebook]
Michael Turton’s article about the ’68 VW Beetle must have brought smiles to the lips of numerous readers. It certainly did to mine.
Our first Volkswagen was not a Beetle, but a ’60s VW bus (or Vanagon) that had about 20 windows, a rollback top cover and four forward gears. A very cool vehicle! It was given to us by a friend who had bought it in Europe with money that he received for a painting fellowship and brought it back to the U.S. after his summer abroad.
When I received it, third gear was inoperable. The bus was never very speedy, and in going up hills without the third gear, one would have to shift down from fourth to second. The top speed was about 30 mph if you had the wind with you. That predicament would often create long lines of irritated drivers behind us. Not a good situation. The solution would have been to have it repaired, but due to our then financial state, that was not an option. However, the motor was still good.
I found a VW Beetle that was engineless. So I took the motor from the bus and installed it into the Beetle. It was quite easy as the motor connected to the rear transaxle with only four bolts and some other minor connections: the gas and some electrical lines. Maybe an hour and a half at the most to remove the bus’s engine and bolt it up to the $75 Beetle.
That car served us for a while. Driving to Maine one summer, we took the Montauk-New London ferry, sailing late one evening, the only vehicle on that passage. On the way we bought a stove that we squeezed into the rear seat. When in Maine, we took out all the seats except the driver’s and hauled large rocks to repair the foundation of our barn.
Later, near Philadelphia where we then lived, we found a cream-colored Beetle that was purchased in Germany. It was in pristine condition. It came with a Blauplunk radio that fit into a bracket under the dash and was removable as a portable. The coolest thing about that car was it had the European turn signals that lit and flipped up out of the car’s body to signal a turn.
After that we had two VW square backs. We thought a lot of them despite some drawbacks: very little heat and poor ventilation, for example. They did have a lot of room for us to haul our stuff back and forth between Philadelphia and Maine.
I don’t think any of our VWs had a gas gauge. That came with later models. The way it worked: There was a lever under the dash, and when the car was running low on fuel, it would stall, and before it stalled completely, the idea was to reach down and turn the lever so the remaining gallon or so in the tank would make it run until one could get to a gas station. Also some early Beetle owners obtained an accessory that clipped to the visor. This had a little number wheel to be set as a reminder of the mileage to know when to search for fuel.
One evening my wife, Emily, was out doing errands and ran out of gas. She called me by pay phone (no cell phone then!) to tell me where she was and to bring gas. I gathered a partially full gas can and waited for the trolley at the corner. It was not very late; people were sitting on their steps talking to neighbors. As the trolley arrived, and the door opened, I was met by three men who held me and lightly beat me with a pole for my wallet. So from then on, we made sure we had enough gas.
And later we had two VW Rabbits…
My dad bought his first Bug in 1968. I was born in 1978. I remember our car up until 1992 for the family was a 1966 Volkswagen bus when he bought it it had flowers all over it and a peace sign on the front, it smelled like what my dad told me was still cigarettes but I later come to find out it was marijuana when I was older my son and I are still into Volkswagen. We have numerous buggies and building a ball bug at the moment.
I was an Army brat stationed in Germany and my first car at 16 was a 1956 beetle. It had the turn signals that flipped in and out from the window area. It had a really tiny rear window. My high school buddies and I drove it around the Nurburg ring before the 66 1000 kilometer race. In 1968 I bought a 1965 Westfailia camper bus complete with flowers and other stuff painted on it. Drove it everywhere. After the bus I bought a brand new Beetle: It was black with a red interior. I drove it for about a year and traded it for an MGB but often wish I had kept it.
We’re almost finished restoring a ’69 Beetle. This was my wife’s car in high school and when we got married in ’78. Her dad kept it in a shed for over 40 years out of the weather. New paint, original color, original interior, too. Car has only a little over 48,000 miles.