Volkswagen Super Beetle, 1972

This 1972 Volkswagen Model 1131 Super Beetle was the 15-millionth Volkswagen Beetle manufactured, bearing serial number 1,122,500,715. The Super Beetle has a four-cylinder, horizontally-opposed, overhead-valve, four-stroke engine, located in the rear of the car. Beetles of this type got about 25 miles per gallon and had 11.1-gallon gas tanks. The museum's Volkswagen was unused and had only 16 miles on the odometer when donated.

American firms dominated the U.S. car market from the 1910s through the 1960s. In 1955, the Big Three domestic manufacturers sold 95 percent of the nation's new cars. Still, this dominance masked the beginnings of a change-the rise of the foreign car. Volkswagen (VW) was the first major foreign car maker to get a foothold in the U. S. market. The Beetle began life in Nazi Germany, as the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, who wanted to build a low-priced popular car as a propaganda tool. Despite its unpleasant associations with fascism, millions of people bought VW Beetles after World War II. By 1972, approximately four million "Bugs" had been sold in the United States. By that time, however, Volkswagen was increasingly being surpassed by Japanese car makers: in 1973, U.S. consumers bought more Japanese cars than they did West German makes.

In 1972, the Smithsonian collected the 15-millionth Volkswagen Beetle. According to the letter curator Don Berkebile sent to Volkswagen of America, the Beetle was a significant addition to the collection. He wrote, "Surely the Beetle is the mid-twentieth century equivalent of the famous and beloved Model T Ford, and it has proven once again that an economical car can provide dependable transportation." S. Dillon Ripley, Secretary of the Smithsonian, wrote at the time of the car's acquisition, "though it is a foreign car, it surely is a big factor in today's transportation scene, and therefore fits into our collection." Despite these claims, which were remarkably like the message the company's PR department was disseminating at the time, Volkswagen sales in the U.S. had fallen 16.2 percent in the three years before the museum collected the car.

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