Photos | From Nazis to hippies: End of the road for Volkswagen Beetle

Volkswagen is halting production of the last version of its Beetle model this week at its plant in Puebla, Mexico. It's the end of the road for a vehicle that has symbolized many things over a history spanning the eight decades since 1938.

Updated on: Jul 11, 2019 9:58 AM IST

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A collection of beetle car toys is seen on a Volkswagen Beetle displayed during the annual gathering of the “Beetle Club” in Yakum, central Israel, on April 21, 2017. Volkswagen is halting production of the last version of its Beetle model in July 2019 at its plant in Puebla, Mexico, the end of the road for a vehicle that has symbolized many things over a history spanning eight decades since 1938. (Oded Balilty / AP)

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German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler speaks at the opening ceremony of the Volkswagen car factory in Fallersleben, Lower Saxony, Germany, on May 26, 1938. The car’s original design — a rounded silhouette with seating for four or five, nearly vertical windshield and the air-cooled engine in the rear — can be traced back to Austrian engineer Ferdinand Porsche, who was hired to fulfill Hitler’s project for a “people’s car.” (AP)

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To celebrate the 500,000 produced Volkswagen Beetle after WW II, the company had organised a beetle roulette, with 10 red and green beetles in the Volkswagen stadium in Wolfsburg, West Germany, on July 7, 1953. The car was a symbol of Germany’s postwar economic renaissance and rising middle-class prosperity. (Henry Brueggemann / AP)

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Volkswagen beetles are assembled in lines at the Volkwagen auto works plant, which manufactures nearly 900 automobiles each day, in Wolfsburg, West Germany, on June 16, 1954. Thanks to Volkswagen, Wolfsburg boomed in West Germany’s postwar rebirth and today the town and the company are inseparable. By 1955, the one millionth Beetle - officially called the Type 1 - had rolled off the assembly line in Wolfsburg. (Albert Riethausen / AP)

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Guards stand in front of a shop on a street in the Latin Quarter of Paris, following a student riot and general strike that rocked the city, on May 11, 1968. Production at Wolfsburg ended in 1978 as newer front drive models like the Golf took over. But the Beetle wasn’t dead yet. Production went on in Mexico from 1967 until 2003 — longer than the car had been made in Germany. (AP)

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Volkswagen employees work in the assembly plant of the Volkswagen sedan ‘last edition,’ at the VW plant in Puebla, 65 miles (105 kms) southeast of Mexico City, on July 21, 2003. It is here that the company will stop producing the cult classic bug on July 30th. (Jose Luis Magana / AP)

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A Volkswagen New Beetle car is lifted inside a delivery tower after the company’s annual press conference in Wolfsburg, Germany, on March 12, 2012. The end of the Beetle comes at a turning point for Volkswagen as it rebounds from a scandal over cars rigged to cheat on diesel emissions tests. (Michael Sohn / AP)

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Taxi drivers gather around their Volkswagen Beetles in a neighbourhood of Mexico City known colloquially as “Vocholandia,” for its love of the classic Beetle, called “vocho”, on July 9, 2019. Volkswagen is gearing up for mass production of the battery-driven electric compact ID.3, a car that the company predicts will have an impact like that of the Beetle and the Golf by bringing electric mobility to a mass market. (Cristina Baussan / AP)