Beetles

Years ago, when young people who could not afford to go to Europe did so anyway, I sold my 1969 Mustang, my wife and I purchased a German-made Volkswagen Beetle for pickup in Europe, and we drove it around the continent for a summer. The car was yellow, and it looked a lot like it performed after it was shipped to the USA….like a lemon. Our marriage held up better than that car.

Nevertheless, and perhaps overcome more by nostalgia than good sense, we bought a used VW bug two years ago.  It’s robin egg blue….the cutest darn thing you’ve ever seen….and so far it’s performing just fine.

While traveling in Germany this summer we saw few VW Beetles.  Fewer in a week than we see in a single day in our community in the USA.  We’ve seen many times more Beetles in Central and South America than in Germany itself. We’ve been wondering why there are so few Beetles in Germany compared to many other countries, and we have a theory.

The proprietor of the little hotel where we stayed in the heart of what was the western sector when Berlin was a divided city told us that German people don’t fit their stereotype.  They drink more wine than beer, he said, “And German people stopped eating German food 35 years ago.  It’s good for tourists, not Germans.”

Perhaps it’s the same for the VW Beetle….a car for the rest of the world, not Germans.  Commissioned as “The People’s Car” by Adolf Hitler in 1933, but gaining popularity first in a modified form as a military vehicle during World War II, this model may conjure difficult memories and emotions among German people.

Since the late 1940’s when car manufacturing capability began slowly to return to war-torn Germany, it appears Germans have preferred not to own but to export “the people’s car.”

JER