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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Volkswagen will stop making the Beetle car next year, ending nearly seven decades of production in North America, the company has announced.
The company's American unit said it would halt output at its plant in Mexico after making two special edition models of the third-generation bulbous bug in July 2019.
[...] The car sold for about 30 years in the US before it was taken off the market in 1979. Production continued in Mexico and Latin America.
Volkswagen revived it in 1998 as a more modern "New Beetle", attracting mainly female buyers. The company revamped it for the 2012 model year in an effort to make it appeal to men, giving it a flatter roof, less bulbous shape, a bigger trunk and a navigation system. US sales rose fivefold to nearly 29,000 in the first year, but tailed off after that.
[...] Volkswagen has no immediate plans to revive the Beetle again, but the company wouldn't rule it out. "I would say 'never say never'," the CEO of VW of America, Hinrich Woebcken, said in a statement.
I thought they'd stopped making this over a decade ago. Do they still make the New Beetle?
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/13/volkswagen-to-stop-making-its-iconic-beetle-in-2019
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 20 2018, @04:41AM (3 children)
The exterior was good. It ably modernized the classic shape. The interior, though, felt much more cramped than the classic one my friend had in high school. Did anybody else find that, also?
I don't know enough about automotive interiors and their dimensions to understand how that can be possible, for two cars with the same wheelbase, from the same company, to have such a disconnect between the exterior and the interior. The Toyota FJ Cruiser is the same way. Looks like an awesome, life-sized Tonka truck on the outside, feels like a clown car on the inside.
Maybe it's Time Lord technology, stealing dimensions away from models like those to make others like the Honda Fit feel bigger on the inside than they appear from the outside.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 20 2018, @07:24AM
We upgraded the front seats of a 1960s car with modern seats, giving it headrests, more adjustment for taller people, ability to lean the seat back, and nicer seat belts. But those new seats cut the leg room in the back way down. Modern seat backs are a lot thicker. And if you slide them all the way back, they're almost into the rear seats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @12:26PM
Had to drive the beetle as a loaner, and it's a good bit bigger than the "classic" ones. Don't know about crampedness, but its interior is more upright/ vertically oriented like truck cabins, and with the tall wide doors, some fat ass told me it's easier to get in and out of.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:32PM
Modern vehicles need larger dimensions. If you are standing next to an original Beetle, open the door and measure the thickness. Then look at whatever car you are standing next to. Unless you are at a Beetle convention, you'll see a huge difference. This is one example of the differences that make modern vehicles safer, quieter, and more comfortable.