Mexicans Still Love the Bug
Volkswagen’s shapely New Beetles are rolling off the high-tech assembly line here, poised to dazzle cash-flush American baby boomers swept up in nostalgia for 1960s Beetlemania.
Oblivious to the New Beetle frenzy, Enrique Vazquez and his team of artisans go steadily about their work in Hall 28 on the outskirts of the plant. At a pace of 172 autos per day, they are building the real people’s wagon--the old Beetle.
Puebla is the only VW plant on Earth still churning out the old Beetle, feeding a still-robust market for the car that motorized Mexico. And there is no end in sight.
Perhaps more than any other country, Mexico made a reality of Adolf Hitler’s pre-World War II dream for the Volkswagen sedan: to make a genuine People’s Car. More than 60 years later, an estimated 1.1 million Beetles are rattling through the choppy streets of Mexico each day, accounting for nearly 20% of the national passenger car fleet.
So deeply has the VW Beetle penetrated Mexican life and culture that the Vocho, as it is known, remained the nation’s best-selling passenger car through the early 1990s, long after it vanished from the new-car market in most countries. And it’s still a neck-and-neck race.
In the process, the Beetle has left a much deeper cultural imprint here than it ever did in the United States. While many Americans embraced it as a quirky anti-car, Mexicans needed its cheap functionality--and still do. It became part of the Mexico family, teaching generations how to drive and fix cars, inspiring mom-and-pop business ventures by the thousands, and even becoming an important part of the nation’s commercial fleet.
“It’s a car for all kinds of people. You can be rich or poor, young or old. The VW is like the joker in the deck,” said Carlos Pinzon, who gave up his veterinary practice to run a used-parts shop called La Casa del Volks [The House of Volks].
No one thinks that the New Beetle, which goes on sale this month here and in the United States, will threaten the enduring success of the “Bug” in Mexico.
The old and new Beetles could hardly be more different: The old Beetle is noisy, a gas-guzzler for its size and a rough ride--not vastly different from the 1950s versions, with the same basic air-cooled, back-end four-cylinder engine and four-speed manual gearbox. Indeed, a huge advantage is the interchangeability of parts--not just across model years but across decades.
The New Beetle, with its front-mounted engine, is an ultramodern automobile that Volkswagen sees as a launch pad for nothing less than its North American revival. Its Beetle heritage consists only of the name and the familiar shape. It is chic, safer (yes, air bags in a Bug), surprisingly spacious inside and technologically sophisticated.
The new version is aimed mostly at U.S. buyers, with only 7,000 to 8,000 sales expected here. Meanwhile, Mexican Vocho sales are projected to jump 20% to about 50,000 this year.
One big reason: the New Beetle costs $15,200, without frills. The new old Beetle costs half that. But the Mexican affinity for the Vocho goes beyond just price.
“Our economy constantly rises and falls, but people who can put together a little money always come back to the Vocho. It is economical, not only in price but in the attention it needs. It bears up well, over hills and through ravines. There’s no doubt you’ll get where you want to go and it won’t leave you stranded on the road.”
Those words come not from a sales executive but from factory worker Esteban Cornelio, who has spent 25 years on the old Beetle assembly line and has a 1981 Bug of his own. His devotion is unequivocal:
“These are craftsmen who make the Beetle, not machines. One develops a lot of affection for this car.”
Government Helped Drive Bug’s Popularity
By the late 1970s, the original Beetle was seen as antiquated and unsafe, and motorists turned to the flood of modern, high-quality Japanese small cars. In Germany, the last Beetle rolled off the line in 1978. It continued to be produced in other countries including Egypt, South Africa and Brazil, though all but Mexico gradually shifted to more modern VW models such as the Rabbit and Golf. Bug No. 21 million (worldwide) came off the Puebla line in June 1992. An additional 350,000 have been made here since then, nearly all for the Mexican market.
The Bug’s long-running Mexican success is testimony partly to an unusual degree of product-customer fit, as the marketers would put it, matching the right product with the right price. But it is also a direct result of the Mexican government’s determination to drive up the production and sale of the Beetle as cheap road transportation over the past four decades--with some painful consequences in the form of brutal air pollution and urban sprawl.
The original Beetle was first assembled and sold in Mexico in 1954, the first factory opened in 1962, and the current Puebla plant, an hour’s drive east of Mexico City, was established in 1965.
From early on, the government offered subsidies for Beetle buyers and dealers alike, and in 1989 even formalized that regime with the “Decreto del Auto Popular,” or People’s Car Decree, a subsidy scheme specifically for the VW sedan, as the model is formally known here. The Bug earned the subsidy support because for many years it was the only small, cheap car in a market dominated by expensive cars from the American Big Three.
This social engineering led to a burst of Beetle sales that has barely subsided, although recently arrived small-car competitors have taken market share. The Nissan Tsuru, also built in Mexico and similar to a Sentra, overtook the Vocho as leader in national passenger car sales in 1994. But the Vocho bounced back in 1996, and the competition remains fierce for the No. 1 spot.
“Almost all of us started with a Vocho. I had two as a youth,” said Alejandro Flores, publisher of Vochomania, Mexico’s Beetle fan magazine. “Functionally, it is most uncomfortable, it only fits four people, it is totally impractical. For most people, it is simply a question of price. The great majority dream of a car with electric windows but can’t afford it.”
Flores’ magazine, launched two years ago, has surprised its owners by surging to a circulation of 50,000, and has just gone from monthly to twice-monthly. A competitor magazine has just entered the field.
In Mexico, the old Beetle is actually getting a nice sales bump from the new. Thanks to a reviving Mexican economy and the buzz around the New Beetle, sales of the old Beetle are growing briskly from 1997’s 35,000 units.
All but about 15% of old Beetle production stays within the Mexican market. Exports go to other developing countries or to enthusiasts, mainly in Europe, who pay a hefty price to bring the old Beetle up to acceptable emissions and safety standards.
The New Beetle, meanwhile, spearheads eight or nine VW product launches planned between now and 2000 for new generations of Passats and Jettas, said VW Mexico executive Michael Wijers. The state-of-the-art New Beetle “will pull people into the showroom and show them VW’s new way of doing business--and sell them a Jetta or Passat.”
By contrast, “You have nearly a prehistoric way of building the old Beetle,” Wijers said, including manually bolting together the body and chassis. The old Beetle is a break-even product for VW given its labor-intensive production process, but it serves as an “image puller” in Mexico, and there are no plans to stop making it, he added.
VW Mexico is also selling loads of low-priced modern Pointers imported from Brazil, which compete against the Nissan Tsuru and a tiny GM model, “the Chevy.” But the Beetle is still the cheapest passenger car.
Basic Transportation--and Much More
Mexico’s Vocho owners fit several molds: There are the fanatics who restore their Beetles. There is the taxi fleet, especially in Mexico City, where more than 90% of the 80,000 taxicabs are Vochos. And there is the mass of car owners who simply need reliable, low-cost transportation.
The buffs who read Vochomania magazine are not unlike their Southern California brethren (though there are fewer Beetle-based dune buggies here). Some Mexican devotees prefer classic restorations, using only original parts; others have a penchant for the extreme modification.
There’s a Lamborghini conversion, and a couple of stretch-limousine Beetles can be rented for weddings and other occasions. And, as if the Beetle weren’t already small enough, there are chopped versions, two-thirds the original length and reduced to a two-person sportster.
Pinzon, president of the Ovals Only Club of Mexico, and his wife, Monica, got out of the veterinary business to make a living from their obsession. Their Mexico City shop is crammed with old parts and imported accessories, and they have also set up a small factory making and restoring parts.
Pinzon’s 1956 Bug has the original-equipment flower bud vase attached to the dash--a coveted accessory that is standard equipment on the New Beetle.
“At 17 I fell in love with the car. I saw it was very strong, very economical, easy to drive, easy to get parts. Now I can afford another brand, but there’s a lot of crime here and with another car I would just invite trouble,” he said.
For most Mexicans, Vochos are pure functional transport, with the advantage of interchangeable parts, basic technology and dead-simple repairs. There are even informal sidewalk workshops that rebuild whole engines.
“We Mexicans say, with a wire and a Chiclet you can fix a Vocho,” publisher Flores said,
Heightened Security on Beetle Taxi Fleet
Each Vochomania issue offers illustrated how-to articles on major repairs. Pinzon recalled that as youths, “My brothers and I played with our Vocho, and we even took out the engine. It’s as easy as removing four screws.”
A vast pirated parts network has sprung up, with copies available of every Beetle component. The Beetle is also the most stolen car in Mexico.
Security is a particular problem with Mexico City’s immense fleet of Beetle taxis. Beyond the legal Vocho taxis, most of the estimated 8,000 more unlicensed taxis that cruise the streets are Beetles. More than 2,500 taxis were stolen last year, many of which were then used in the capital’s wave of brazen street robberies and kidnappings.
The latest bizarre sight on Mexico City’s choked streets is the armored VW Beetle taxi, with the driver tightly encased in a wire-mesh cage or a full-fledged New York-style glass booth sealing off one-fourth of the compartment.
Mexico City Beetle taxis remove the front passenger seat for quicker entry to the back seat, which is the only passenger space. Yet the classic how-many-people-can-cram-into-a-Beetle stunt is performed routinely in the capital as whole families pile into taxis for outings.
Raimundo Artiz Spriu, newly appointed director general of the Mexico City transport department, said cruising taxis are a major contributor to the capital’s foul air pollution. The 7,500-foot altitude means cars are 25% less efficient anyway, he said, and the VW Bug is fuel-inefficient for its size and a worse polluter than cars with more modern engine design.
Artiz plans to actively encourage a shift from Beetle taxis to larger, more efficient and safer vehicles.
“The competition and industrialization policies of this country always discouraged the auto industry from developing efficiently,” Artiz said. “And the VW earned protection of an enormous political weight, with tax breaks and other huge benefits that were not always visible.”
But the inertia will be formidable. People won’t quickly surrender their Beetles. And why would they?
After all, notes Vazquez, the factory production manager, the Vocho is so tough “you can drive it without a clutch, at least from second to third to fourth.”
