My wife’s dream car is a fully-restored original Volkswagen Beetle. I also think they’re awesome, but I wouldn’t especially care to own one. Still, they’re easy to anthropomorphize as having friendly, smiling faces. It is that appeal which warrants the 2016 documentary The Bug: The Life and Times of the People’s Car.
This well-paced film covers the origin and early years of the vehicle, as well as its impact on popular culture and its lasting appeal with collectors. The right amount of time is devoted to these different topics, and I never felt we were overdue to move onto something else.
Intertwined throughout is a thread concerning one man’s extensive restoration of a deceased man’s Beetle. The original owner’s widow laments her husband was never able to complete a project he intended to be his life’s work, and so she is pleased to have another person take it on.
Watching the young guy’s progression and setback on this restoration job, we feel his joy in his successes and his despair when he stumbles. He is quite humble: “Every paint job is a new experience. This time, I learned I don’t know shit.” There is one scene where he replaces a notoriously difficult windshield and I think I held my breath while he did that.
The history of the vehicle is quite interesting. It’s hard to believe a car that so embodies cuteness had its origins in Nazi Germany. And yet, despite a common misconception, the Beetle was not designed by Hitler. As one talking head puts it, “In case you weren’t aware, he was involved in another line of work.” Curiously, the man who contributed the most to what would be known as the car of the Nazis was, in fact, a Jew.
It is after WWII that was of the most interest to me. For a vehicle which would
become so ubiquitous in the 1960’s, it’s amazing how slowly it came to be accepted in the US. In 1949, the first year the car was available in the states, only two were sold. One interesting contemporary moment has a collector acquiring a 1950 Beetle complete the original title, or as the owner puts it, “Here’s a copy of the birth certificate.”
As a fan of commercial art, a fair amount of time is spent showing the revolutionary print campaign that was a major factor in the vehicle’s eventual success here. There’s also some examples of innovative TV advertisements and not just from the colonies. A clever, animated piece from Germany has a line of paired animals boarding Noah’s Ark, ending with two Beetles side-by-side.
One of the more bizarre things I learned in this documentary is you can remove the top and just drive the chassis—hence the creation of the dune buggy. I also learned a lot about how taxis in Mexico used to be almost exclusively Beetles. Although they were only ever two-doored, drivers would simply remove the passenger seat for easier egress.
There’s a cute disclaimer at the beginning of The Bug, warning viewers not to engage in any games of “punch bug” for the next 80 minutes. How fitting for a vehicle that is so entwined into the public consciousness, even today. I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary and learned a thing of two I didn’t know before. Highly recommended.
Dir: Damon Ristau
Documentary
Watched on blu-ray