Last of the VW Beetles

The curtain has finally been drawn on the production on what remains the biggest selling car in the world - the original Volkswagen Beetle.

Cuter than a basket of Christmas puppies and more reliable than an MRT arrival, the 'Bug', as it became known by millions of American fans, was truly an icon of 20th century that helped shape an entire automotive industry.

At the end of July this year the very last Beetle (number 21,529,464) rolled off the production line at Volkswagen's Mexican plant at Puebla.

It won't be up for sale, however. Instead it has made its final journey to the Beetles' ancestral home and birthplace, Wolfsburg in Germany. Here it will join several other VW classics at the plant's Automuseum.

While the last true German Beetle was produced at Wolfburg in 1978, production continued in Mexico where the car - which was locally known as the 'Vocho' -- continued to live up to its name as 'The People's Car' by providing fun and relatively inexpensive transport to the masses.

A limited batch of 3000 blue-coloured "Última Edición" Beetles were produced for the legend's final send-off in Mexico. The 1.6-litre car, which produces a modest 45bhp, comes with special chrome strips and chrome exterior parts such as bumpers, hubcaps and mirrors as well as colour-coded wheels. It is finished off with the famous Wolfsburg crest resting above the engine compartment lid.

Simplicity, affordability and ease of maintenance were the key factors behind the massive success of the Beetle in a 68-year lifespan.

No other car has retained the same, unchanged body shell and underpinnings over such a long period. No other car has touched so many lives.

While other cars also adopted rear-mounted engines, it was the Beetle that was the first car to use this arrangement.

Like the rest of the car, its air-cooled flat-four 'boxer' engine remained virtually unchanged over its lifespan, save for the usual detailed refinements and capacity increases.

The car was the brainchild of Ferdinand Porsche - father of Porsche sportscars - and the dream of Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler.

It was Hitler who, in the mid-1930s, instigated the development of Nazi Germany's new, efficient trunk roads, dubbed 'Autobahnen' and it was Hitler who commissioned Porsche to develop a true 'Peoples' Car' that could be driven by the masses on these new expressways.

While Porsche was no Nazi sympathiser, one suspects his hands were somewhat tied by this request from the 'Fuhrer'.

Porsche initially got funding through the NSU engineering company to build a prototype of the Peoples' Car and in 1934 built three examples of Project 32, which were the descendents of the first Beetles.

The final prototypes of the Beetle, known as KdF-Wagen, were produced in 1938 and were mainly used by Nazi government officials.

Hitler introduced a savings stamp scheme, which would allow ordinary people to save towards a new car. But the scheme was never honoured as war broke out shortly after its introduction.

It was after World War Two that with the help of British management the Beetle rapidly became a legend in its own lifetime - especially later in the North American market where more than five million were eventually sold.

The Beetle has been produced in more than 20 countries worldwide over the years.

It may be no more, but legends don't die. The bug won't be forgotten.