{"id":31078,"date":"2016-10-12T11:01:17","date_gmt":"2016-10-12T09:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.museonicolis.com\/en\/volkswagen-1976-1600-maggiolone\/"},"modified":"2024-07-12T12:00:55","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T10:00:55","slug":"volkswagen-1976-1303-maggiolone-cabrio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museonicolis.com\/en\/volkswagen-1976-1303-maggiolone-cabrio\/","title":{"rendered":"Volkswagen, 1976, 1303 Super Beetle Cabrio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Volkswagen 1303 \u201cSuper Beetle\u201d Cabrio, 1976, Germany<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The most famous car started its adventure in 1934<\/strong> when Adolf Hitler<\/strong> asked Volkswagen <\/strong>to produce a car within everyone’s reach. Ferdinand Porsche<\/strong> was the first to propose a project to the \u201cFuhrer\u201d who claimed to have found the “greatest designer of all times” to create the “Volkswagen”<\/strong> (the car for the people).
\nIn 1936<\/strong> three prototypes were built and Hitler chose the name KDF,<\/strong> \u201cKraft durch Freude” Wagen (the car of the strength through joy), as car name. Porsche’s complains about this choice were useless, he thought a car with that name could have not been sold abroad.
\nIn 1938<\/strong> before the car production began, the German government founded the \u201cVolkswagen\u201d<\/strong> factory in Wolfsburg<\/strong>, in order to give work to its citizens. The public version of the KDF-wagen was introduced in Berlin in 1939,<\/strong> it costed less than a “Topolino<\/strong><\/a>” and its design was modern and aerodynamic.
\nIn 1970<\/strong> a new Beetle<\/strong> version with a completely new front end was introduced: it was called 1302<\/em>, but people know it as “Super Beetle”<\/strong> because of the bigger nose compared to the standard version, which will be kept in production.
\nThe car in our Museo is a 1303<\/strong> model, the update of the 1302, in the Cabrio<\/strong> version built by Karmann.<\/strong><\/p>\n

QUIRKS
\n<\/strong>The car was officially named \u201cBeetle\u201d<\/strong> only in 1968,<\/strong> when an advertising brochure defined it as \u201cDer Kafer\u201d<\/strong> (the Beetle).
\nThe European production of the Beetle stopped in 1978<\/strong>, but kept going in Brasil and Mexico until 2003, making it the longest-running car ever made.
\nThe Beetle is the only mass-produced car that can float<\/strong>, for small periods of time, thanks to its flat bottom and the low weight. A famous journey was the Strait of Messina crossing, repeated several years later, with a slightly-modified Beetle compared to the original<\/p>\n

Shooting, Andrea Bocelli and Ed Sheeran\u2019s videoclip<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\r\n\r\n \r\n