The Volkswagen Beetle

Stolen Volkswagen Beetle - The National Archives UK 

The Volkswagen Beetle or Bug, officially called the Volkswagen Type 1, is an economy car produced by the German automobile manufacturer Volkswagen, now Volkswagen Group which was built from 1938 to 2003.

The car was conceived as a cheap simple car, and was designed by Ferdinand Porsche.

With over 21 million manufactured in an air-cooled, rear-engined, rear-wheel drive configuration, the Beetle is the longest-running and most-manufactured car of a single design platform, worldwide.

The Beetle was only produced in significant numbers after 1945, when the model was internally designated the Volkswagen Type 1, and marketed simply as the "Volkswagen". Later models were designated VW 1200, VW 1300, VW 1500, VW 1302 or VW 1303, the former three indicating engine displacement and the latter two being derived from the type number and not indicative of engine capacity. Since the early sixties the model became widely known as the "Käfer" in its home country after it had been successfully exported to the U.S. and was later marketed after the "Herbie" movies as such in Germany, and as the "Volkswagen Beetle" in other countries.

In the 1950s, the Beetle was more comfortable and powerful than most European small cars, having been designed for sustained high speed on the Autobahn. It remained a top seller in the U.S., owing much of its success to high build-quality and innovative advertising, ultimately giving rise to variants, including the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and the Volkswagen Type 2 bus.
The Beetle had marked a significant trend led by Volkswagen whereby the rear-engine, rear-wheel drive layout had increased continental Western Europe's car production until 1956. The 1948 Citroën 2CV and other European models marked a later trend to front-wheel drive in the European small car market, a trend that would come to dominate that market. 

In 1974, Volkswagen's own front-wheel drive Golf  model succeeded the Beetle. In 1998, Volkswagen  introduced the "New Beetle", built on the Golf platform with styling recalling the original Type 1.