The last South African-made Volkswagen Beetle came off the production line on 18 January 1979 and went straight into the Volkswagen museum which later became the VW AutoPavilion. The metallic bronze Beetle was the last of 288 353 built at Uitenhage plant 1951. The car only had 200km on the clock when a vehicle carrier overturned on the way back from a show in Cape Town in 2006, destroying nine of the AutoPavilion's most important historic cars, including this one. It was decided though to painstakingly recreate the car (recreate and not restore as the body was totally written off) using as many parts of the original as possible. The car is one of the exhibits in the VW AutoPavilion's collection which can be viewed when visiting this awesome museum in Uitenhage.
Eish, 9 historic cars down the tubes? That's very sad. Hope some of the others were "recreated" too.
ReplyDeleteExcellent recreation of an iconic vehicle! Thanks for sharing another piece of SA history.
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