It is hard to follow a legend, but Volkswagen arguably did it better than most when they (finally!) replaced the original air-cooled Type 1 Beetle with the Golf in 1974. That was exactly what the company needed to rescue them from plummeting sales and set them on the path to modernity and fresh success as the 1970s turned into the 1980s. However, as the world's best-selling car ever, not to mention the one that created Volkswagen and saw it safely through the rockiest of postwar periods, the Beetle would never be forgotten.
In fact, the original was still being produced in Mexico (and would continue until July 2003) when a concept car created on a VW Polo platform and designed in the USA at VW's California studio was exhibited at the North American International Auto Show in 1994. Called Concept One, this took its styling cues from the original Beetle, and was perfectly timed to ride a swelling wave of nostalgia into production in 1997. By this time it was based on the bigger Golf platform, and it went down a storm. There was a facelift in 2005 that brought sharper creases to the styling, and a new New Beetle from 2011 that carried production through to its end in 2019.
The car in our pictures will be familiar to most readers, as it was a project in this magazine from the August 2023 to the December 2023 issues. Built in the year 2000, it is newer than most of the cars we feature in CW, but that retro styling has helped it gate-crash the classic party.I do think the stripes help on this car, because otherwise the silver paint is blandly at odds with such a funky shape.
