On February 17, 1972, a small, rounded, bug-shaped car puttered out of a factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, and quietly broke a record that had stood for almost half a century. It was the 15,007,034th Volkswagen Beetle, one more than the total number of Ford Model Ts ever built. That made the Beetle the best-selling car design in history, a title the Model T had held since 1927.
The Beetle had started as a strange dream back in the 1930s. A German engineer named Ferdinand Porsche was asked to design a cheap 'people's car' that any family could afford. The first models had rear engines, no radiators, and an unusual rounded shape that helped them slide through the wind. After World War II, when most of Europe's car factories were in ruins, a British army officer named Major Ivan Hirst restarted the Wolfsburg plant, and Beetles started rolling out by the thousands. The little car got shipped to dozens of countries, where it earned nicknames like 'Käfer' in Germany, 'Vocho' in Mexico, and 'Fusca' in Brazil.
In the 1960s the Beetle became a symbol of fun and freedom, painted with flowers, packed with surfboards, and starring in Disney's 'Herbie the Love Bug' movies. Production didn't fully end until 2003 in Mexico, with over 21 million Beetles built. A modern version came later, and now electric Volkswagens are picking up the story. But the original Beetle, that tiny humming bug, still putters down highways today, the little car that outsold them all.
