Volkswagen Bugs Still Crawl Mexico’s Streets : Automobiles: Germany and Brazil no longer make the lowly Beetle, but a plant in Puebla still turns out about 450 a day, with no end in sight.
Well, yes, it does look just like last year’s model.
And no, there aren’t any options: You see those bumpers, brake lights and the steering wheel featured in the sales brochure? All standard. You want a radio or hubcabs? Try down the street.
But it’s cheap. The guy on the corner can fix it. And it’s state-of-the-art technology--circa 1934.
The Volkswagen Beetle is still rolling off the assembly lines here with no end in sight, 14 years after Volkswagen stopped making it in its German homeland and seven years after production shut down in Brazil.
In fact, company spokesman Fernando Mendez said, Volkswagen hasn’t ruled out the idea of exporting the Beetle to the United States again once engineers here adapt the car to the California-style smog rules Mexico City is imposing by 1993.
“If conditions in the United States don’t change, this would obviously open up possibilities for the car,” Mendez said. Mendez stressed, however, that the company has no firm plans to export the car and is not sure how well it would sell in the United States.
Volkswagen has made more than 1.1 million Beetles here since 1955, when a Studebaker plant began assembling them under contract. Now Mexico is the only place where the Beetle is made.
Volkswagen sold about 5 million Beetles in the United States between 1949 and 1977, said Larry Nutson, a spokesman with Volkswagen of America, which is based in Auburn Hills, Mich. “Sales were trailing off because we introduced a new car,” the Rabbit, he said.
Nutson said there were no plans to reintroduce the Beetle in the United States, but he said the company still gets queries about it.
In the late 1980s, the car seemed doomed in this country as well. Production had slipped to 120 cars a day. Then Volkswagen, aided by government tax concessions, cut the price by more than 20% just as the Mexican economy started to improve.
The plant at Puebla, 70 miles east of Mexico City, is now producing about 450 Beetles a day, making the model Mexico’s best-seller.
It’s the favorite of Mexico City taxi drivers, who normally remove the front passenger seat to ease access into the rear seat. It’s hard to find a taxi driver with much bad to say about the car.
“It’s the fifth wonder of the world,” said Roberto Chavez, who drives a 1990 model that replaced his ’76 Beetle after 14 years.
“Of all of the models (in Mexico), it’s the most economical,” he said. Parts are easy to find, they’re cheap, and they go in quickly.
Price is another major selling point in a country where the minimum wage adds up to less than $5 a day and factory workers commonly earn about $500 a month.
A new Beetle costs a little less than $7,000--about $3,000 less than most other economy cars.
The Mexico City government recently signed an agreement with Volkswagen to buy 10,000 Beetles as part of an anti-pollution drive. It’s selling the new cars, which use unleaded gasoline, to taxi drivers at low prices in hopes of getting smoke-belching older cars off the streets. Mexico City has some of the worst air pollution in the world.
But some things never change. The 1992 Beetle looks pretty much like the first ones that rolled off the German assembly lines nearly 21 million cars ago. The windshield still stands a few inches from the driver’s face. The heater still doesn’t work well.
Mendez said the Mexican versions have a device that adjusts the carburetor automatically to compensate for altitude changes--a drive from sea-level Veracruz over the 9,500-foot-high pass into Mexico City is not uncommon here.
They also have stiffer suspensions, needed to cope with potholes and the mountain-high speed bumps that seem to be Mexico’s most popular municipal art form.
And as always with the Beetle, there’s been a change here, a tweak there for the new model year: a catalytic converter, electronic ignition, a dual braking system.
But as Mendez says: “Basically, its the same vehicle.”
