Downfall Of Volkswagen

By Kamyah Phillips

Volkswagen was a very popular car brand in the 60’s. Its most well-known claim to fame was the Beetle. They have released many different versions of this car over the years. It’s understandable that they’ve made so many different versions because it’s their best-selling car. With more than 23 million sold the beetles were a gold mine. Back when they were new everyone wanted a beetle. They were featured in lots of movies too such as “The Love Bug”, “The Bug”, “Herbie Fully Loaded”, and “Super Bug: Super Agent”.

    Beetles were a hit. They were fun, cute, and small. They kept getting upgraded so more and more people enjoyed them. They also had the Pickle Van. The pickle van came out around the 1950’s. Most of the people buying them were hippies, which were very big in the late 1960’s. Everything was looking good for Volkswagen, they had different something for everyone and business was booming. 

    It stayed this way for Volkswagen up until the 80’s. Their sales started to drop rapidly. Sales in the United States were 293,595 in the 80’s. In 1984 they had sunk down to 177,709. The reason sales started to drop was because Volkswagen had to shut down several times due to a shortage of materials. Things only got worse from there. In September 2015 Volkswagen had violated the Clean Air Act by installing illegal software into their diesel vehicles. In 2019 Volkswagen decided that this year's beetle would be their last model. Volkswagen decided to stop producing their classic beetle because it wasn’t selling as well as past record-breaking iterations.