Thirty eight years ago today Volkswagen Type 1 (more commonly knows as Beetle) produced it’s 15,007,034th unit. This number bested Henry Ford’s famous Model T, making the Beetle the most produced car in the world.

The 1977 Beetle I owned, affectionately dubbed “Libby”, was the last model year that the curvy VWs were imported into the US. This was also the same period where full-time production stopped in its German assembly plants, while the car continued to be produced in Peru and Brazil for another 25 years or so.

I bought Libby around 1993 or 94, after having my 2nd stint as a carless-person in Houston. She was in pristine shape: great body, tinted windows, air-conditioning (!) and only 85,837 miles. She was a great car to go “motoring in” around Houston’s flat, well-maintained roads.

Of course all of that changed when I moved to DC: potholes, salt & sand on the roads, careless parkers and stringent inspection standards all did their toll. I put Libby “out to pasture” in summer 2003, with a  good conscience. Needing many, many repairs I sold her to the father of a high-school friend of mine, who tinkers and restores old VWs. So I assume that Libby is still out there somewhere, leisurely motoring along a country road.