Mexico and I Both Have a Lifelong Love Affair with the Volkswagen Beetle

I thought my first love was gone forever. Then I went south of the U.S. border.

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

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My first crush had round eyes, a chubby body, and a racing stripe down his back.

I was five, he was five. It was meant to be.

His name was Herbie — the Love Bug, to be exact. The star of the 1968 kids’ movie about a sentient car.

Herbie, the aforementioned “Love Bug.”

Oh, you think kids’ movies are so much smarter now? May I remind you there’s currently a thriving franchise about, yes, a group of sentient cars.

Anyway, five-year-old me adored Herbie. When he made a “special appearance” at our local theater in Colorado Springs, and my mother took me downtown to meet him, I was vibrating with excitement.

I don’t remember all the details — I vaguely recall Herbie honking his horn and maybe the door opening and closing by itself? — but I stood right next to him, and for a five-year-old, it was dazzling.

By the time the sequel, Herbie Rides Again, came out in 1974, I was almost twelve and had mostly lost interest in the movies. Herbie was definitely something meant for little kids.

But my love affair with the VW Beetle lived on, and nearly a decade later, when I turned nineteen, I bought my first car: a Beetle.

It was beat-up, beige, and not much to look at, but it dutifully ferried me to my classes at the University of Colorado in Boulder during the early 80s.

Even then, my Beetle was so old that snow blew up through the floorboards. But on cold winter days, the car’s gallant little heater somehow kept me from freezing.

I vividly remember the smell of that car: crayons. Yes, crayons! Beetles all smelled like that at the time because of the kind of wax used in their manufacture.

I paid $400 for that car — a hefty price back then — but it was worth every penny.

Not my car, but one very similar.

It might sound weird to be nostalgic for a car that smelled like crayons and had holes in the floor, but here we are.

Still, I’m far from alone in loving the Beetle. It’s in the top five best-selling cars ever, with over 21 million manufactured worldwide between 1938 and 2003.

And can I just say? The Toyota Corolla, the top-selling car of all time, never inspired the kind of devotion the Beetle inspires.

I loved my Beetle for its goofy look — that curved hood separating those big headlights made it so easy to anthropomorphize.

But I also identified with it.

It was a “people’s car,” meaning it was made for folks without much money. I was a poor college student putting myself through school, and in my Beetle, I saw my scrappy self — not worried about being rich or fashionable, just focused on getting my degree.

Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash

Ironically, I’m not a “car person.” To this day, I can rarely identify a car’s make or model. I couldn’t tell a Dodge Charger from a Chevrolet Explorer if my life depended on it. Or is it a Dodge Explorer and a Chevrolet Charger?

Either way, if my life did depend on it, I’m dead now.

I left to live in Australia shortly after college, so I had to sell my Beetle. I sure missed that sturdy, reliable, and seemingly cheerful car, but hey, that part of my life was over.

Over the following twenty years, Brent and I owned a series of non-Beetle cars. I honestly can’t tell you the makes, models, or much else about them. We inherited one massive beast from Brent’s mother.

Then, one day, I spotted a used cherry-red Volkswagen “New” Beetle at our local mechanic’s. The car we’d inherited from Brent’s mother was too big for our garage, and we needed a new one.

To my delight, Brent liked the car as much as I did, and a few days later, it was ours.

I loved our new Beetle — although my affection wasn’t quite as great as for my first one. This model even had a sunroof, although it never got much use in the rainy Northwest.

Alas, once we started nomading in 2017, I knew we had to sell it.

This time, it really did seem to be the end of my long-standing love affair with the Beetle. As we traveled, I rarely saw one, even the newer model, which never really caught on.

Then, two months ago, Brent and I arrived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

And Beetles were everywhere. And they were classic Beetles, just like my first.

First, I spotted this powder-blue one.

Then I caught sight of this very pink one.

Soon I was seeing them everywhere I looked. I quickly learned that Mexico has a love affair with the Beetle as long and abiding as mine.

The country started manufacturing them on October 23, 1967, six days after my fourth birthday and one year before I met Herbie.

Mexico didn’t just produce them: the country unofficially adopted the Beetle as its car. Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the Beetle was the country's best-selling vehicle.

Just a few of the Beetles I spotted in San Miguel.

In Mexico City, in 1970, green-and-white Beetles even became the city’s official taxi cabs.

The Beetle has its own nickname here: Vocho, pronounced “Bocho.” These days, people aren’t sure if it’s just slang for “Volkswagen,” or a combination of the Spanish word for bug — bicho — with “VO,” the first two letters of Volkswagen.

Either way, I love it.

The country produced the original Beetle until 2003, nearly thirty years after the last one rolled off a German assembly line in 1978.

The “Vocho” became Mexico’s car for many of the same reasons I bought my first Beetle: it was an unpretentious car for an unpretentious people.

It was also scrappy, able to handle Mexico City’s steep hills and the country’s rough roads. It was tough and durable, much like the Mexican people.

And thanks to its simplicity, it was easy to repair and keep running long after more expensive cars were sent to the junkyard.

That’s why so many are still on the road today.

Finding and photographing Beetles in and around San Miguel has been an unexpected delight.

Not only is every day a “Vocho” treasure hunt, but each Beetle I discover transports me back to when I was nineteen and heading out into the world on my own.

I thought I’d lost my first love twice before, only to discover it again. But now I've found it a third time, in Mexico, no less!

Those beautiful Beetles are all around me, humming down roads and rattling up alleys. And as before, I'm picking up right where I left off.

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Michael Jensen is a novelist and editor. For a newsletter with more of my photos, visit me at www.MichaelJensen.com.