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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 drussell on Thursday September 20 2018, @12:16PM
The real, original Beetle was produced from 1938 to 2003.
The "New Beetle" was produced from 1997 to 2010.
The current Beetle, which started production in 2011, is built on the same "A5" chassis as the Jetta.