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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 19 2018, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-more-herbie dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:34PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:34PM (#737509) Journal

    I did QA drive testing for a third party contracted to Volkswagon for a summer about 15 or so years ago. I remember liking the New Beetle, liking the Jetta even more, found a European prototype of something like what's now the Touareg interesting, hated the Audi TT, and the Audi A5 was good but overhyped. The Beetle had a turbocharger that was fun to kick in - about a one second delay and you'd get a small kick from the acceleration.

    I don't know about the new Jettas, but it will be one I test drive when my current car bites it. I forgave VW for the testing BS when it happened.

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