Here’s The Story Behind VW’s 1960s Beetle Re-Design And Why It Never Happened

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Among classic air-cooled Volkswagen obsessives like myself, there exists a pool of photographs that seem to be familiar to almost everyone within the community. These photos have been reproduced in countless books, displayed on on websites, sweaty, crumpled printouts passed between hands in crowds, and so on. They’ve all been scrutinized and marveled at, some more than others. One particular set that always manages to seize my interest like a chimp grabbing a Snickers bar are these pictures of a stillborn modernized Beetle from the mid 1960s. It represents a fascinating glimpse into a future that never happened, but I never really knew the story behind this project, which Volkswagen called EA 97/1. Finally, some details have emerged, thanks to our pals at Car Design Archives, and it’s an interesting – even if, in the context of how VW was run for decades – predictable tale. Let’s look at these pictures and dig into the story behind them.

Comparo

First, a bit of context. You have to remember that the VW Beetle was a design that was finalized in 1938, and by the 1950s was already starting to look very dated. The entire look of cars had changed over the intervening decades, and the Beetles’s narrow body/separate fenders/humpbacked look just wasn’t in vogue anymore, even though the Beetle had already begun to establish its own distinct character and identity by the 1950s.

According to Car Design Archives (CDA), “VW noticed that sales of the Beetle were beginning to slow down, especially in export markets,” though I have to admit that I’m not sure I’m seeing the same trends. If we look at this record of American market sales figures reprinted on The Samba for the Beetle for its lifetime in America, from 1949 to 1979, sales throughout the 1950s look pretty strong to me:

50ssales

That seems like pretty steady growth? Maybe it was too slow for Volkswagen, and, besides, they probably weren’t wrong to note that they were selling a 1930s-looking car in the 1950s, and that definitely needed to be addressed, somehow.

In case you’re not familiar with these pictures, here’s what I’m talking about:

Frontqtr

Look at that! It’s clearly a VW Beetle, but it’s been pretty extensively re-designed and modernized, and looks more like a late 1950s or early 1960s car than the iconic Beetle as we’ve known it. The archaic running boards are gone, and the body is a full-width design. The information dug up by CDA reveals that the redesign project, led by Rudolf Ringel of the Studies and Prototyping Department, reached out to Luigi Segre and Sergio Sartorelli from the Italian design house Ghia for the project. Ghia’s partnership with Volkswagen is, of course, well known, mostly thanks to the famous Karmann-Ghia sporty (let’s be honest, not sports) car built on humble Beetle mechanicals.

The project’s goals were really very rational: to make the Beetle a more modern unibody design, instead of the strange semi-unibody/semi-body-on-frame method that was used; to make the pasenger cabin roomier and more comfortable, improve visibility and enlarge the window area, and, of course, to transform the Beetle into something that would look current when parked next to, say, a Rambler or Renault Dauphine or even a Toyota Crown. And all this was to happen by September of 1965, ready to be unveiled to the world at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

It seems that at least two styling models were built, with slightly different design details, though overall they were really quite similar:

2versions

I haven’t found exact confirmation of this, but I suspect the upper one is an earlier design than the lower one there. I say this because that upper one incorporates the sloping, double-glass Hella headlights used on Beetles from the start of production until 1967 (for U.S.-spec models, at least), and the lower one has more upright units, similar looking to both what would appear on 1968 and later Beetles and also similar to the lights used on the more upmarket VW Type 3 cars which hit the market in 1961, and were being developed contemporarily with this redesigned Beetle project.

Rearqtr

I find this redesign project fascinating for a lot of reasons, mostly because it has to be one of the earlier design attempts to modernize a car while trying to maintain the distinctive visual character of the original car. In later decades, we might call this a “retro” design, though at the time I’m not sure they would have thought of it that way. Still, the designers are being asked to perform an interesting dance here, making something that feels like a ’60s-era car while retaining just enough of that Beetle-ness, so much of which is rooted in a 1930s automotive design language. Look at the details that were retained: the “butterfly” sorta-shaped stampings on the front hood, the distinctive engine lid, the suggestion of separate fenders, the sloping roofline. It does feel like a Beetle.

If this actually came out in 1965, though, I think it would still have looked a bit dated; it feels more like a late 1950s update of a 1930s car than a 1960s update, but that makes sense, considering the project started in 1957. Most of this was all known, though; what was new to me were the reasons why Project EA 97/1 never actually happened, which is what I learned from the CDA post.

It seems that the project actually got as far as being greenlit by the VW board of directors, and tooling to build the new model ordered, with 10 pre-production prototypes (the book Volkswagen Raritäten says dozens!) actually built! I had no idea the project got this far along. But, two things conspired to keep it from actually happening.

The first one was good news for Volkswagen, because Beetle sales picked up to and even beyond the expected or even hoped-for levels set by VW. This lessened VW’s perceived need to replace the Beetle, and besides, the new version would be more expensive to build, both on a per-car basis and the one-time costs of all the new production equipment. So, faced with expenses and less profits to replace a vehicle that was still selling wonderfully, the argument for a new Beetle was hard to make.

The second reason was that in 1965 VW bought Auto-Union from Daimler-Benz, a move that would much later form the technical future of Volkswagen post-Beetle/air-cooled era. This move made VW reluctant to pour more money into their aging bread-and-butter car, as well as redirecting the company’s focus.

1938 2003

So, six months before the planned revised Beetle was to be launched, the project was canned. On some level, I think this is kind of a shame, but at the same time, the fact that the Beetle continued on until the outrageous date of 2003 with what was still fundamentally a late-1930s design absolutely delights me. A redesign every decade or so is what most cars do. But not the Beetle. The stubbornness of the design became a crucial part of its character, and if you wanted to buy a car with running boards and separate fenders in, say, 1975, you really had no other choice.

Plus, a switch to a unibody design from the old body-bolted-to-pan design would have meant that the whole dune buggy/kit car movement of the 1960s and 1970s likely would not have happened. There was only a Meyers Manx or Brubaker Box or any number of other VW-based kit cars because VWs were dirt cheap, ubiquitous, and had bodies you could pull off after taking out only 10 bolts. A unibody Beetle wouldn’t have allowed for that, and that would have prevented one of the most vibrant and fun automotive subcultures from being born.

So, while I think the Ghia-designed ensleekified neo-Beetle is a very cool artifact, I think overall I’m happy midcentury VW was such a risk-adverse cheapskate. Sometimes staying a step behind the competition is just the right move, as strange as that sounds to us today.

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50 thoughts on “Here’s The Story Behind VW’s 1960s Beetle Re-Design And Why It Never Happened

  1. I never saw the beetle as a 30s design, it’s just a beetle. It doesn’t look like anything else I can think of from the 30s (besides all the weird prototypes and one-offs that inspired it that I only know of from reading Torch articles)
    That redesign does look like some other 50’s cars, and therefore would have dated it much worse than leaving it alone did.

    1. Yes that’s not worded well. The original had a heavy emphasis on aero -and thus compromised internal packaging- due to the design requirements.Later when they got bigger engines ,that shape wasnt required

      Also i agree.The redesign looks worse

  2. By the 1960s, the Beetle’s stubborn 1930s-ness was not only accepted but embraced. Half-measures such as this redesign would have strangely emphasized its obsolescence while undermining its charm. Although the Golf/Rabbit never reached the Beetle’s iconic status, the clean break was the only way to go.

  3. Like the upright headlight look.
    Then I realized why; my first car was a 72 squareback.
    They had upright headlights.. always wanted to add tail fins and make mine into a mini ’57 nomad.

    1. Totally grok this. My first car was a ’70 Squareback.

      I think the later design looks fantastic – too bad it never made it further than a handful of prototypes (which probably went to the crusher).

  4. I remember the late Tom Kellogg — he was primarily responsible for Raymond Loewy’s Studebaker Avanti design — showing me a portfolio of renderings which were, he said, commissioned by VW. The goal was to “modernize” the Beetle design over several iterations while maintaining the VW identity. I remember them as being much sleeker and more of-a-piece than the examples Jason presents.

    IMO, Tom was one of those rare designers who understood the value of keeping a consistent and long-lasting corporate design “face.” Not something many current stylists — or their employers — seem particularly interested in.

  5. I Think the updated design landed somewhere between a 1948 Tucker Torpedo and a 1949 Ford Shoebox. So yes, they managed to get it to look 10 years younger, but that wasn’t enough for the 1950ies, and definately very long from enough for the 1960ies.
    I mean the 403, Peugeot’s first real post war design, came in 1955. And so did the sleek Citroën DS, if VW looked a little west..
    So VW did the right thing and dropped the half baked not enough idea, and didn’t fall in to that Botox trap the Bishop illustrated so wonderfully recently. They even got a 20th century automotive icon on their hand instead, just like the 2CV, the Mini, the Land Rover or the Checker Cab (or the last roundly shaped Crown Vic..). Well done, Wolfsburg!

  6. If they wanted to update the design, they should have at least taken some inspiration from the Morris Minor featured earlier today. /s

    Those running boards were very important here in the land of salt and snow. They were considered sacrificial. Every year you would hope all the rust would be attracted to them and leave the rest of the car alone. Annual maintenance would then be bolting on new running boards and maybe heater boxes.

  7. Are there any photos of the front or rear of the earlier version? The taillights look lower, closer to the bumper, like Bugs until about (’60? ’61? I’m deeply ashamed I don’t know this for sure despite Jason’s tireless efforts)… I know ’59s were still pretty small and low and by ’63 they were bigger and I think higher. (Please forgive me, Mr. Torchinsky…) However, the revision, bringing the lights higher still… did VW still believe the Beetle’d lights were too low? I think the raised units make the rear of the later version look ungainly- the earlier revision looks much prettier to me- what do you think, fellow Autopians?

  8. Thank God it fell through. The car sold itself and became a cult of sorts, through the iconic Doyle Dane Bernbach advertisements that poked fun at the car. Those ads sold more Beetles then these unfortunate looking body changes ever would.

  9. I don’t think this would have been a commercial success. As Jason notes, it has a ’50s vibe to it and really doesn’t seem that much more “modern” than the existing Beetle. And changing the Beetle primarily for appearance’s sake would have been counter to VW’s entire brand image at the time.

    The prototypes make me wonder if a Fiat 600, a Volvo 544, and a Simca Aronde hooked up and something untoward happened.

  10. “If you wanted to buy a car with running boards and separate fenders in, say, 1975, you really had no other choice.”

    Er… Morgan?
    And they are still at it with a design even older than the Beetle.

  11. I wonder if this was part of the longer-term thought process that eventually resulted in the Super Beetle? Volkswagen had it in their head for a long time that they needed to do “something” to meaningfully update the Beetle – toyed around with the new body shell idea, scrapped it, and eventually decided on a more substantial re-engineering with more subtle sheet metal tweaks?

  12. It’s best for all concerned that the redesign didn’t happen. From the front it looks like a wider Messerschmitt. It kills all the Beetle friendly character.

  13. This shall be my chariot as I emerge from the multiverse. I pray my search for the reality in which “Heat Vision and Jack” is a hit bears fruit.

  14. Even by 1965, VW had to know that the RE, air-cooled car was going to be a dead end, sooner or later. California, a big market for VW was starting to make noises about emissions controls, and the rest of the world would soon follow. Buying Auto Union was a much better way to spend money. In the alternate universe where they spent money on this instead of buying Auto Union, VW would have been all but dead by 1975.

    1. I don’t know if emissions was that big of a concern for Volkswagen in 1965 – they ended up selling air cooled Vanagons in California until 1983, and Porsche hung in there with the 911 until 1997

      1. Maybe I was wrong about the emissions bit specifically, but I’m pretty sure the writing was on the wall by the mid-60s. The world was changing; people wanted more than basic transportation, at least in 1st world countries. The Beetle and Fastback/Squareback weren’t going to be scalable to bigger and more powerful cars. When they tried with the 411/412, it was a pretty dismal failure. If it wasn’t for the Dasher/Passat, derived from Auto Union projects, how would VW have survived the 70s?

          1. Not based on the “classic” Audi longitudinal FWD that traces back to the 1929 DKW, but still leaning heavily on Audi engineering and FWD experience.

            1. Audi 50 (Audi’s first transverse-mounted FWD car, introduced in 1974) formed the basis for Polo/Derby, Golf/Rabbit/Jetta, and Scirocco—all released within months of each other in late 1973 and during 1974.

        1. Oh, Volkswagen was definitely at the end of what they could squeeze out of the platform, they still had million+ Beetle years through 1973, but US sales peaked in 1969 at just under 400k and started gradually sliding after that – slight upward bounces here and there through ’73, but never really getting close to that high point. The Type 3 never made a huge impact on the market, the Type 4 was a complete flop, and the Ghia was always sort of a niche item, so, really, every time they tried to spin a more “upscale” car off the RR aircooled architecture, it never replicated the success of the Beetle, and, as well as the Beetle sold, it carried thin profit margins and clearly wasn’t going to last forever, especially with the Japanese arriving in droves – the Toyota Corona was practically a Cadillac next to a VW.

        2. By the mid-70’s people were desperate for fuel economy and not very concerned with power. If you’ve ever tried to drive a Japanese import from this era up a hill, you will know exactly what I mean.

      2. the Vanagon was less subject to emissions BS much like other trucks of the era. But I suspect the up market nature of the Porsche with Jet-tronic injection and AFR sensors probably helped. I can only imagine how slow a VW flat four with the 70’s emission stuff would have been. Porsche somehow got away with not having a catalytic converter until 1980.

  15. Today I learned something, thank you Jason! I like more the earlier version

    Also interesting that they sold so many of them and they can go for high value for some reason, they were not that unique. Maybe the quirkiness of the design, who knows

  16. Those side pictures heavily remind me of Porsche. I wonder if Ghia was leaning on the link between the companies with that, and if so what Porsche would have thought of this “upgraded” Beetle

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