VW Beetle History & Spotter's Guide 1938 to 1978

if you're a little bit more than someone out just surfing the internet and is actually thinking about restoring one of these old vws i can assure you that you've found the right video furthermore if money is an object and you're a little bit more than just a hobbyist and you plan to make a profit off your restoration project what you're going to find is the older the better as with almost everything because the older they are the more rare they are and i'll get a lot more into that as the video goes and it's not necessarily a production thing that you know that they're not out there they are out there it's just that they're being gobbled up and the older they are the less likely you are to find one because they've already been bought and restored interrupt for sale or they're being restored and hoarded until the price is right or just because someone is a collector the way you're going to find is mostly 1970s vw beetles and the next popular ones are from 66 to 69 and then they get a little bit more rare from 1960 through 1965. and then they get very rare if you go back into the 1950s it's gotten to the point where it's almost impossible to find as for the 1940s they produced a beetle mass production from 45 to 49 you're not likely to find one because they did import them to america and the only production year before that was 1938 but they didn't sell them to the public if you're looking for rare and and as much as you can get for one of these things after they're restored you're probably best off sticking to the 1960s but if you find a 1950s beetle while you're out there searching you should gobble it up and get it i'm going to teach you how to spot them real quick and how to know exactly what year each one is but before we get into that i want to i want to share a brief history of this card because that will give you a good foundation on the rest of it the idea for the volkswagen beetle was born in 1935 and this is the prototype which was rejected by a guy named adolf he up the same adolf you're thinking about and the idea was to produce a bare bones air cooled basic everyday driver that the average human being would use every day and could afford no maintenance no no luxury no worries no hassle just purely practical adoles had in mind a much smaller much lighter much rounder version of the original creation in 1935 and it took three whole years to create what he would eventually approve of which is the same exact classic beetle body style that lasted from 1938 to 1978 and it's the same exact old-time classic beetle body style that we know and love today and with the approval of the guy in charge of everything production on the volkswagen beetle began in 1938 [Music] hey [Music] hey the few cars produced in 1938 were not sold to the public they were held back and used by the higher ranking german military and this is because hitler sensed a war coming and he had good reason to sense it then september 1st 1939 world war ii started and hitler stopped production on the car altogether because he needed that space to build war ammunitions so from late 1939 through 1944 and most of 1945 there were no vw beetles produced at all on april 30th 1945 and six years into the war every single american newspaper had one big gigantic headline and it said adolf hitler is dead the war was coming to an end and four months later on september 2nd 1945 world war ii was over [Music] hey [Music] oh at the end of 1945 volkswagen reclaimed the bomb factories and resumed production on the volkswagen beetle but the big question was who the hell was going to buy anything from germany and germany's answer was america they'll buy anything but germany was wrong those who knew about the production of the car laughed at it and germany was not allowed to market in america here we see the first vw beetle come about to come off the assembly line animal bomb factory in germany in 1945. none made it to america and germany was kind of relieved over that because the carter was plagued with problems it was the biggest piece of junk in the world i mean the biggest lemon to ever be assembled in any assembly line yep worse than the hugo they kept coming back to the factory for repairs and they were fine-tuning the car all the way through 1946 and that's when america's wall street started paying attention once the bugs were fixed the car started selling throughout germany and other parts of the world and volkswagen took the attitude to who needs america and furthermore america was into big and the biggers are better they they liked flamboyance and luxury they were in to celebrate and they were patriotic and they damn sure we're not going to buy a car from germany they weren't going to buy anything from germany they hated germany you have to realize that america was changing quickly and this was the age of women's liberation and while men were off fighting the wars women were going to work they were earning their own money the men came home from the war and found their wives were no longer barefoot and pregnant and furthermore didn't want to be barefoot and pregnant they were actually wearing pants yep girls were wearing pants and they were also wearing bikinis and while they were very big bikinis they were still bikinis and you could actually see their belly buttons oh my heavens yep their belly buttons so everything was a celebration and some men were very uncomfortable with the celebration they were just dancing there were big parties there was jazz music there was all kinds of crazy stuff going on and we were celebrating we were victorious we killed hitler we beat germany williams and the atom bomb everything was groovy wait it wasn't groovy yet it didn't get groovy until the 60s and i'll get into the 60s in a minute so in america we can officially determine that the volkswagen beetle was a total flop nevertheless germany continued production of the car and he did sell quite a few in other countries and they sold a bunch in germany so while the car was continuing to be produced it didn't catch on in america until the 1960s and that was with the hippie culture and particularly the california hippie culture the american government blocked all imports of the vw from 1945 to 1950. in 1950 they started backing off on the restrictions and a few thousand of them made their way to america but they were still a public boycott now imagine yourself five years old in 1950 mom is back to being barefoot and pregnant dad is a sexist he's the archie bunker of the 1950s and your childhood sucks and the marriage is hanging on by the thread you're approaching your teenage years and what's going to be the dream to get back at that and really piss them off for destroying your mom and your childhood in 1950 wall street managed to put enough pressure on our political system to lift some just some of the restrictions and they still weren't allowed to advertise the car in america but they could now import it but important product that nobody knows about is not going to work still the volkswagen beatles kept selling everywhere except america and by 1955 they had sold their 1 millionth beetle and only 9 000 of them were bought by americans america's business world kept wanting in on all the action but the older more conservative politicians some who actually fought in the war kept saying no it took another five years but the selling points remained the children of the war generation would soon be of age and they would need affordable new cars the war had been over for 15 years it was time to look forward and stop looking backward there was a lot of money to be made in 1960 the u.s released all restrictions all boycotts all everything and told germany go ahead and sell as many as you want and the ad campaigns were absolutely brilliant and historic vw is the only big company that i've ever heard of who had a successful ad campaign by making fun of itself i mean that's just unheard of but that's what they did and that backhanded kind of satirical humor appealed to the youth market the other folks just didn't get it but the young people did if vw knew exactly who to target they targeted them and it was very very successful [Music] oh [Music] and the car appealed a lot to the young rebellious type for a lot of reasons and number one the adults hated it and number two it can be can easily convert it to a dune buggy so when you're talking about california desert and california beaches well having a dune buggy is the coolest thing in the world right so yeah the vw beetle started catching on with the hippies and that includes all models of the vw so isn't it ironic that the car appealed to a hippie culture and here they are buying them up used and new i'm from germany all the same time they're protesting the vietnam war while buying cars from a country that housed the biggest war criminal in the history of the world yes but hang on a second there's there's a little bit more to this story because the car was so basic and so fundamental and so low-tech and so cheap it actually it made a statement just by driving the car that said look i'm not greedy i know there's more life than corporate america and money i'm being practical i am living for the truth peace love understanding and that's right i'm not going to college i am not going to be your ceo i'm not going to dedicate my life to making greedy people more wealthy this was the selling point this is what hit home with the hippies and it's actually a very beautiful thing for a minute let's flash forward to today it's the beginning of 2021 auto restoration has become a rich man's game uh particularly for his muscle car here of the mid to late 60s and through the early 70s when safety and emissions kind of destroyed the whole muscle car here and any old muscle car from that ear is getting hard to find and when you do find it the person knows the value of it and wants a ridiculous amount of money for it and it's just a pile of rest that you have to do all the work on and so yeah the big dogs are buying these things up paying the price for these junked out rusted out pieces of junk putting 40 grand into them and turning them over for 80 grand well the poor man can't afford to play that game so what does he do or what does the new what does the kid do who's well not a kid let's say he's 20 years old he wants to get in the auto restoration but he doesn't have 50 grand to get a project done and he doesn't even have the tools he's just a street guy what does he do well enter the new market for the old vw bugs and there is a big market and it's rising and people are out there right now gobbling them up for peanuts putting 8 grand into them getting 16 grand for them doubling their money and they're happy and here's the big thing about all these vws out there sitting in barns and on hay fields and and just throughout all of america although they are disappearing quickly number one people will give them to the restoration is is rising the parts are everywhere and are also dirt cheap and most of all they're easy and fun to restore anyone can do it if you don't do any research and you just go out with your three hundred dollars looking for an old vw beetle you're gonna come home confused and overwhelmed and that's for two reasons there's so many of them and number two they all look the same and there's good reason for that and that's because the shell of the car the body shape never changed from 1938 to 1978. so you wind up with this thing saying they all look the same they're all the same some have a little bit more rust and others some are missing more parts than others but the basic shell of the car is the same it's hard to tell the difference between a 1978 and a 1938 so how the hell are you as a spotter supposed to know what to be spotted i'm about to show you the vw actually made fun of this fact they get during the time of the 60s when they started marketing the car the big debate in society was evolution does it exist and you know have to have society was split on it so they actually showed year by year the the evolution of the beetle and there was no evolution and this was all satirical oddly enough the christian culture in america liked this ad and it appealed to them so they got in on the christian culture too so let's get started with just a few basic facts if you think you're going to go out and find a 1938 beetle you can forget about it they don't exist and as you know they started reproducing the car in 1945 but if you think you're gonna find a 1945 to 1949 beetle in america you can forget about that too so you can forget about the 30s and the 40s as for the 1950s they're very rare and these are the most sought after cars in america they do exist they are out there but they're very very hard to find and because germany didn't start mass producing an important cars to america until the 1960s but if you can find in 1950s i can tell you the later 1950s are a little bit easier to find in the early 1950s and here is a restored 1951 i found in jacksonville florida and it is for sale for fifty thousand dollars which if this guy has the title to this car is an absolute steal if you're dead set on finding a 1950s volkswagen beetle it's you're probably gonna find one in the later years and even though it's a pile of junk chances are real good that the owner of the car is going to know the value of the car so be prepared to shell out a little bit of money if you can get one cheap for just a couple hundred bucks you need to buy but finding it is going to be a full-time job when the regulations were lifted on germany to advertise the car in america they started importing a lot of them and they started selling a lot of them so by the mid 60s imports began to absolutely explode and they skyrocketed and they kept getting it kept getting better throughout the years all the way up until like the mid 1970s which was the rebirth of greed and excess and the hippies kind of traded in their living in the woods to living in high-rise apartments in manhattan and making a lot of money being broke was overrated and they went back to mom and dad were right all along it all ended in 1978 when sales were just nothing there was nothing they were important cars and they couldn't give them away so if i were you i would stick to the mid to late 1960s if you're looking for something that's going to be rare tomorrow because they're out there there's a lot of them out there there's even more 1970s because people are buying up to 1960s first this gets a little confusing so you might want to break out a pen and take some notes the rarest of the rare up through the year 1952 and all the years prior the vw beetles were made with this split small oval window it's a two-piece oval window they would discontinue this in 1953 and make it a one-piece oval window so it didn't have this bar in the middle of the window because imports didn't start until 1950 if you see one of these in america you're looking at it either in 1950 the 51 or 52 and these are the most sought after beetles today let's take a look at this decline handle do you see how it just comes straight out of the latch and goes straight down well what you're looking at is a 1950 vw beetle and they kept this same design for 1951 and and that was designed for other years prior in 1952 they changed this to a horizontal handle so if you're looking for split window beetle we know the last year for that split window is 1952 so you're semi sure but you're not positive that this is in 1952 well we know it is because 52 was the first year for that horizontal handle all the big changes on the vw beetle happened in 1958 so what do we do and how do we tell the difference between a 53 54 55 56 and 57 complicating this whole matter is the fact that all beetles built up until 1958 included this famous w on the decklid the famous w the upside down m for mcdonald's that's exactly what it looks like [Music] so the years of 53 to 57 have this small oval one piece window also has the w so how do we tell those years apart and we have to go to the front of the car front turn signals were not mandated in the us until 1955 and they were mounted they were first mounted low and wide on the front fenders so if you have the w and you have the small oval window and you walk around to the front and you don't have these turn signals you're looking at either a 53 or a 54. in 1953 was last year for these top windows on the tail lights which look something like this so in 1954 they changed them to look like this and if you do have these turn signals you're looking at a 55 or 56 or 57. the most obvious giveaway for 1956 is that dual exhaust they have a chrome tip before this it was all single exhaust so for a brief overview if it has the small oval window if it has the w and if it has low wide turn signals on the front and it has a single exhaust it's a 1955 and if it has all that and it's a dual exhaust it's a 1956 or 1957. and if if you're still not sure and you can open up one of the doors and inside the door jamb it has the striker plate which allows the door to be adjusted perfectly to the quarter panel then it's a 1957 that's the year they first started putting these striker plates in big changes in 1958 with the most obvious being this huge well relative to the other one a huge back window another big difference was the interrupted w where did it go hey here's a 1958 vw beetle and i want you to stay focused on that w and you can see now that the tube goes all the way around the bottom of the hood but they did keep that center piece and the only thing about it is it didn't connect to the tube it kind of fades out right about here and you can still see a glimpse of it but then it just goes into a flat panel which is really kind of bizarre also in 1958 they moved those front turn signal lights up to the top of the fenders there's really no body changes in 1959 it's the same car as 1958 except it has a reinforced frame it has a different fan system and it has a better clutch that's about it [Music] here's the key to spot in 1960 61 and 62. these three years used this emblem right here from wolfsburg wolfsburg is a city in germany where they built the vw beetle this emblem was on the hood of the beetle it has a black background and if you see this you know it's either 1960 61 or 62. in 1963 they tossed it before 1960 they were using lever type door handles where you just pull lever out and pops the door open in 1960 they switched to a push button type handle on the door in 1962 they switched to much larger taillights and here's a before and here's a 62. 1963 was the first year for the fake leather headliner so other than the absence of that wolfsburg emblem that that's it there's no other cosmetic changes at all in 1964 they changed the steering wheel to include a horn that worked with the thumbs of your hands before that there was a ring coming down that looked like this in 64 they changed it to this but you're gonna have to be careful here because in 1966 they went back to that half ring right there also in 1964 they got a lot more colorful and added a whole lot more options for exterior paint and interior colors before 1965 the windshield wipers on these cars were absolutely terrible i mean they were sickeningly terrible and half the time they didn't work they had weak motors it would burn out real easy and it was just an atrocious mess and that was one of the biggest complaints on these cars so in 1965 they changed all that and they had a much stronger motor and much bigger wiper blades so you could actually see out of your windshield now and it usually worked so everybody was happy with that but the big difference here the cosmetic differences at the wiper blades would rest on the left side of the car before this all the years before this the wiper blades will come to rest on the right side of the car the big cosmetic difference in 1965 was that all the windows on the car got an increase in size and that includes the windshield and the back window and basically the back window became wider so it reduced the size of that cal panel in the back and you can see it's also a little more contoured it's got it's got more of a curve on both the top and the bottom of the window so because of this a lot of people were talking about the car and all the changes on the car and how it has improved this remains today as the reason that the 65 is one of the most sought after vw's today just because it's seen by many as the one that started it all another big difference in 1965 is that the back seat now folded down to make like a bench type thing which added much more storage space to the car 66 was pretty much seen as the beginning of the muscle car here even though muscle cars started before this um this was they were also enjoying a boom in cells and it's funny volkswagen played along with this and they increased their horsepower by 20 yeah and went from 40 horsepower to a whopping massive 50 horsepower a down left has greatly helped climbing the hills of san francisco if you're looking for stock 66 the key is in these uh ventilation slots and the wheels to keep the brakes cool and the inner parts of the wheel cool i've seen all kinds of wheels on vws but this is stock with these slots here and they went to a bigger engine in 1966 to a 1500 cc engine and the original one was 1300 now the big giveaway for 67 is this is the first year for that volkswagen badge for that emblem on the back motor cover 67 believe it or not was the first year for backup lights reverse lights on these things and the engine lid or the hood was also redesigned so the license plate would lay up you know straight up and down instead of kind of diagonally in 68 they put the turn signals and the backup lights in the same housing in 1969 they added a rear defogger defroster in the rear windshield and you have to get kind of close to the car to see this but you will recognize it for whatever reason these were the days of people stealing siphoning gas out of people's gas tanks so they added a lock to the gas filler neck and this has to be released inside the interior of the car under the right side of the dashboard they also added a front hood release as it's located in the glove compartment up to this point many children's books were written starring the vw beatle but during 1969 disney released an entire movie starring a beatle named herbie and it was titled the love bug and this would sure continued skyrocketing sales into the early 70s but it all came to an abrupt end and i'll explain it in the next part of the video [Music] now if you plan on restoring a car and taking 10 years to restore or just keeping it for 10 and 15 years there's nothing wrong with buying a 1970s beetle because all the 50s and 60s are going to be all gone and there's going to be nothing left but 1970s so when all these guys go out searching for the last of the beatles your car your restored car will be just as valuable then as the 1960s beetle is today so you can jump ahead of that curve but it's really not wise to go out there and just spend a couple months restoring a 1970s beetle and then selling it and just flipping it because it's going to be worth a lot more in 10 or 15 years from in the 1970s beetles are the easiest ones to spot from 71-78 anyway and if you're out eliminating the 1970s because you're looking for the 50s or 60s and i've got good news where you can do it at a glance in like two seconds and the same holds true if you're looking for 70s and you want to eliminate all the rest of the years this picture is typical of what you're going to find when you go out there and hunting vw beetles because you're going to find most of them are 1970s and all five of these cars in this row are 1971 or newer and the big glaring toe is this ventilation port in back of that side back window they added these in 1971 and they kept them through 1978. in 1970 they added two rows of air intake on the decklid and they kept this through 1971 but in 1972 they added two more rows they also increased the engine output to 1600 cc's and it went from 53 horsepower to 57 whopping horsepower the front turn signals got a lot bigger and now they also acted as side marker lights and side reflectors are now built into the tail light housings and if you get a chance to peek inside the car the glove compartment had a lock on it now this is the first year for a locked glove compartment so as we stated 71 was also the first year they added these ventilation slots and they did not change this through at 1978 when the car was discontinued and as we look at this car we can also see it has two rows of ventilation slots on the deck lid so we know for sure this is in 1971. so let's go back to the picture of the row of beetles and see what what we can pick out at this point okay the third one and the fourth one are missing a deck lid so those are going to have to be put on hold and the fifth one all the way down there appears to have four rows of ventilation slots in the deck lid so we know for certain that this one and this one are both 1971's because both have two rows of slats on the decklids and we both have that ventilation port on the side there in 1971 horsepower increased again from 57 to 60. the towel lights on the 1971 are also much larger in 1972 the vw beetle became the best-selling car in world history and this new record overtook the ford model t as being the best selling car for all the years prior in 72 there's now four rows of ventilation slots in that decklid and they would stick with this through 1978 in 1972 they again increase the size of that rear window and this poor cal panel just keeps getting smaller and smaller in 73 they changed the tail lights again to circular taillights and they held the stop lights turn signals and the backup lights and they would stay with these throughout 78 and the windshield wiper arms are now black they're painted black the 74 saw some safety features by ralph nader all car manufacturers were getting hit by these and especially the muscle car manufacturers the front bumpers are now energy absorbing like a shock if you hit something the bumper collapses a little bit and then pushes back out the steering wheel and column were also changed to give a little bit and absorb in the event of an accident in 1975 america hit a cultural wall with that wall went the south of the vw beetle that absolutely plummeted the hippies were now being seen as lazy people and drug addicts and slobs and now the hippies children were coming of age and looking for a rebellion point everything changed even even the music went to disco was anything but rock and roll which was its own rebellion flame but you get you get the picture no nobody wanted the beetle anymore was just not seen as cool anymore and making things even worse for vw it was all the emissions controls and the safety regulations and it's just it got crazy and they kept trying to push through and appeal to the american market but nobody wanted it in 75 volkswagen was really proud of their new uh fuel-injected engine and they put the insignia on the rear deck lid and so we now had a badge on the back that said fuel injection in 1976 they discontinued the dual exhaust and it was just one tailpipe coming out of the back of the car and for the first year the car required unleaded gasoline for emissions standards in 76 they tried to make the car look more sporty with two-tone paint jobs and much fancier wheels but it didn't quite grab the public 77 and saw for the first time adjustable headrests the ones you can just kind of pull up out of the seat and adjust up or down three to four inches in the interior the car was now velour and very plush and beautiful and and kind of comfortable too but it didn't end with the interior they were now painting the car with metallic paint which really just kind of brought it to life they might have been grasping at straws but they were trying the car was still the same old beetle but now it was actually pretty the big spotter giveaway for 78 is the front turn signals were now placed in the front bumper yeah look at that 78 saw a lot of changes in the chassis and suspension so the car was handling much better in 1978 it also had four wheel independent suspension and rack and pinion steering the headliners were now padded you could see that vw was doing everything they knew how to do to continue to appeal to the american market but it just it just was not working they ran out of options they didn't know how to appeal to the american market anymore volkswagen had to come to terms with the fact that their beetle was associated with an era that was over being broken free was no longer cool americans were back to wanting luxury they were back to greed so spending all this money on all these upgrades would have been fine if there was a market for it and there wasn't so the people who could afford this didn't want to be associated with an era that that was over and they considered uncool yeah i believe it ended with the official ending of vietnam war and i believe volkswagen finally saw the light and that was it that was that was the death of the beetle it was over [Music] uh

Channel: John Disque

Views: 7,652

Keywords: history of the vw beetle, complete history of the Volkswagen Beetle, everything about the VW Beetle, how to tell one Beetle from another one, year to year Volkswagen spotter's guide, information on the VW Beetle, restoring a Volkswagen beetle, Beetle Restoration, hitler and the VW Bug, the VW Bug, how to tell a 1950s beetle, how to tell a 1960s beetle, how to tell a 1970s beetle, how to tell the year of a vw beetle, john disque youtube videos, volkswagen, volkswagen beetle, vw

Id: wEj9a1uvE7o

Length: 41min 29sec (2489 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021