Gordon Barlow

According to this article, the Beetle won't be built any more in Mexico. It's had a great run!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...en-Beetle.html

I bought my first one (second-hand) in Queensland in 1961, at a time when Beetle drivers used to beep each other on the highway. Three years later, I bought a former Police car in Hamburg, Germany. The sales lot wouldn't let me drive it away in the Police colours - green and white, from memory - and made me paint it all white. It had a crash-gearbox (non-synchromesh), and I damn near dropped the transmission out onto the autobahn while learning how to change gears. Yikes.

That car got me and a travelling companion down to Ankara, where I parked it in the Customs shed while we went backpacking through the Middle East for three months, and then drove it up through Eastern Europe to Moscow and back to London. What an absolute gem of a car. My wife and I (she started off as a travelling companion...) have very happy memories of our time with it. And now - quite literally, and sadly - they don't make them like that any more!

Does anybody else have fond memories to share?

Amazulu

I owned 2 back in SA. The first one, a 1300cc was a bit of a disaster - too under-powered, but the 2nd, a 1600cc was a gem of a car. I loved it and wish I'd never sold it

I'd own one today in a heartbeat

BritInParis

Not that the article makes it clear but it’s referring to the end of production for the ‘New Beetle’ - production of the classic Type 1 ended in 2003.

Gordon Barlow

True, but fortunately most of the photos were of the original version! The newer ones were never loved as much as the old.

Gordon Barlow

And here are some photos of Beetles still going strong in Mexico City: enough to gladden anybody's heart! When I visited my son there in 1999 or 2000 (I forget which), it seemed that every second taxi was a Beetle.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ity-hills.html

paulry

The original ones were great cars but they were so prone to oil leaks. If not through the tappet cover gaskets which if I remember correctly the two covers on each engine were snapped shut with thick wire clamps, or through the the push-rod tube seals - and failing that the saucer sized drainage plug with paper gasket and was it 5 nuts that you had to loosen to take it off? But the sub assembly design made it easy peasy to change the engine when everything else failed!

...We'll never have cars like those again.

paulry

Then we have the Golf One which they continued to make in South Africa for 35 years until around 2010. But I was never a fan of those. The last one I drove, a hire car, it must have been around 2008 and by then they were built very cheaply and nastily. I remember the bonnet being made of such thin material that on a highway you could observe the thing rippling. That one was extra annoying too - it suffered gear shift problems whenever you turned at a junction.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a1...meets-its-end/

Amazulu

Yes, the SA Citi Golf was rubbish but when I was an apprentice, I had a Mk1 GTI - which was a truly great car - pretty high performance for what it was. What I'd give to still own it - but back then, I was young and stupid and wrote it off in an idiotic accident that was entirely my own fault

paulry

Yeah, I remember the GTi very well. Very nippy cars, and they looked good. Golfs after that were over-rated crap.