Desirable Cars
VOLKSWAGEN CLASSIC ICONS

Desirable Volkswagens

The original Beetle stayed in production for 65 straight years, from 1938 to 2003 — the longest run of any single car design in history, with over 21.5 million built.

Simplicity as a Genuine Selling Point

Few brands have gotten this much lasting mileage out of deliberately simple, dependable engineering. Ferdinand Porsche finalised the Beetle's design in the late 1930s, and after production nearly ended for good in the chaos following the Second World War, a British Army officer overseeing the ruined Wolfsburg factory made the case for restarting civilian production rather than scrapping it entirely — a decision that eventually produced over 21.5 million examples across twenty countries before the very last one rolled off a Mexican production line in 2003. That's the longest unbroken production run of any single car generation ever built.

The same rugged, rear-engined mechanicals underpinning that humble runabout also carried the far more elegant Karmann Ghia, proof that dependable simplicity and genuine style were never mutually exclusive at Volkswagen. Below are the models we've covered so far.