For reasons only understandable to myself, my now-disbarred therapist (I’m not even certain that therapists have to pass a bar exam? It’s possible she was a lawyer, which would explain a lot, though not why she was able to prescribe medicine that she made herself in the back of her Econoline) and my former rabbi, I have an unusual appreciation of ads and press photographs of Volkswagen Beetle trunks, especially the ones from Super Beetles.
I think it’s because in these pictures, I can feel how excited and proud early 1970s Volkswagen was of their modest but significant achievement: nearly doubling the trunk volume of the Beetle. I mean, think about that! Taking your most popular small car, and while keeping about 75% of the body panels the same and the overall look pretty damn close, making the enclosed cargo area twice as big.
Has that ever happened before? Or since? Maybe, I suppose. Cars can vary a lot from generation to generation, after all. But still, this was a big deal, and was the single largest change to happen in the entire history of Beetledom.
We’re talking trunks, though, so let’s establish a baseline. Here’s what the standard Beetle’s trunk was like:
It’s usable, but not, you know, huge. That’s not a small suitcase in there, and I feel like I’ve packed more in mine, but you get the idea. It was about 4.9 cubic feet of space. Now, check out the trunk of a Super Beetle:
Wow wow wow, right? Look at that! The trunk was now 9.2 cubic feet! Look how many more suitcases they crammed in there! Sure, they’re going to squish down that top bag to close the lid, but as long as it’s not full of puppies, who cares? So, how did they do it?
It was primarily a suspension change that bought all that extra space. The biggest change that made the Super Beetle what it was had to do with the replacement of the Beetle’s tried-and-true torsion bar suspension system with a MacPherson strut setup. Not only did this reduce the turning circle and give the Beetle a much more modern front suspension setup, the physical nature of these struts left a lot more unused volume between the wheels, which could be used for the trunk.
You can see all that space up front there on that photo of the bare Super Beetle chassis, between those two front struts. Look at all that space! Maybe “sports car chassis” is pushing it a bit, but still.
Here, let’s compare the trunk volumes in these cutaways:
As you can see, the double torsion bar front suspension on a standard Beetle, as rugged and well-designed as it was, took up a lot of vertical room, and extended the full width of the car. This meant that the load floor was pretty high, as the fuel tank had to stack atop the torsion tubes, leaving only 4.9 cubic feet under the hood.
There was also a rear luggage well, also 4.9 cubic feet, a weird coincidence considering I don’t think anyone at VW had this volumetric symmetry as a goal?
Now look at that Super Beetle trunk. The load floor drops all the way to the bumper, the spare tire is mounted horizontally below everything, and there’s nearly double the amount of space. I feel like VW was always a little sheepish about the small trunk in the Beetle, so this really meant a lot to them. If we add the front trunk’s 9.2 cubic feet to the rear well’s 4.9, we get a very respectable 14.1 cubic feet of space.
Really, the Beetle wasn’t that far off a lot of its competition. The first-generation Honda Civic, for example, only had a trunk about 8 cubic feet in volume. A Mini only had about 4 cubic feet, but that was a significantly smaller car overall.
Let’s look at how excited VW seemed to be about this new colossal trunk!
Lots of their brochures showed the vast inky blackness of that cardboard-lined trunk, along with a set of luggage that could be crammed in there. VW’s photographers seemed to enjoy this, but I think this is the brochure image that really expresses the unhinged glee Volkswagen body engineers were feeling at all this lebensraum:
Look at that! A whole baseball team, just flinging their equipment in that Super Beetle trunk with the ruthless abandon of falling autumn leaves! There are mitts and shoes and boxes of stuff and some bases and yes, bats, bats, so many bats! That are fitting without having to get buzz-sawed into pieces! And everyone is just tossing crap in there, free from the constraints of having to carefully plan and pack and Tetris all your stuff in there!
Oh, it’s dizzying, the freedom of a big trunk!
There’s another very proud Super Beetle trunk promotional image that I’ve been searching for, but I can’t find, and it’s driving me batguano. It was a picture of a Super Beetle, hood open, with a trunk filled with crates of bottles. I know I’ve seen it, I can picture it, but I just can’t find the damn thing online! Or in any of my books!
It looks like this:
Why can’t I find this damn picture? It’s driving me bizzonkers. Have any of you seen this picture? I’m not imagining it, right? If anyone has a lead on this, please stick it in the comments so I can finally get some peace.
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