Beetle an Aussie auto icon

Nestled away in a corner of the expansive reception area at Volkswagen Group Australia’s Chullora headquarters in Sydney is a car that, like all the other gleaming metal showcased there, displays the VW roundel.

Unlike the others though, this car has not been wheeled off a boat fresh from Wolfsburg or from one of Volkswagen’s many other global manufacturing plants. Instead, this particular Volkswagen was built from mostly Australian steel, glass and rubber and was wheeled out of a Melbourne factory 53 years ago.

The Volkswagen 1200 De Luxe sedan (the Beetle’s official name), painted in Beryl Green, was built in 1962 but bought by VGA to coincide with the local launch of the second-generation Beetle in 2013. It was purchased from a couple in Northern NSW and has done 126,000 miles. Its paint, most of the interior and the powertrain are original.

‘Beryl’, as the ’62 has been dubbed (it is actually a 62.5 model; there was no model change at the beginning of 1962), is now a static display but during the 2013 launch journalists were let loose in the car to see what motoring in the 1960s was about.

The contrast couldn’t be more pronounced; not surprising given that the second-generation Beetle is a retro interpretation of the original, and is based on the latest Golf platform.

The old Beetle is powered by an air-cooled 30kW horizontally opposed 1.2-litre four-cylinder engine; the new Beetle has a water-cooled 118kW inline 1.4-litre engine, both supercharged and turbocharged. The 1962 Beetle weighs just 749kg; the new Beetle from 1310kg.

Beryl is not only a reminder of just how much the Beetle has changed, but how much the Australian automotive landscape has too. This Beetle is as much Australian made as a Holden or Ford.

When Beryl was born, it came into a world that was all about local content, with punitive tariffs on imported cars. The Clayton (Victoria) plant that produced the Beetle from 1954 to 1976 first began assembling CKD (Completely Knocked Down) Beetles but by 1962 local content reached 80 per cent, on its way to 95 per cent in the mid-1960s. From little more than a one per cent market share in 1954, the Beetle was second only to Holden in terms sales by 1961.

Beryl might’ve been retired, but she remains a reminder of how big a part of the local industry Volkswagen once was and that the Beetle was one of Australia’s most popular cars just 50 years ago.

And with news that Volkswagen's modern Beetle may also be headed for the automotive scrap heap, the original's presence at VW's Oz HQ is all the more poignant.