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Car Wallpapers |
Speculation suggests that its peculiar styling, underpowered motor, rough ride, and high noise levels compared to modern vehicles should have made it a market failure. It was in its day, though, more comfortable and powerful than most European small cars, and ultimately the longest-running and most-produced automobile of a single design (a record that will not take long to be beaten by its younger "cousin" the Type-2 Bus or Kombi, which is still in production in Brazil with the same basic characteristics of the first series). It remained a top seller in the US even as rear-wheel drive conventional subcompacts were refined and eventually replaced by front-wheel drive models. The Beetle car was the benchmark for both generations of American compact cars such as the Chevrolet Corvair and subcompact cars such as the Ford Pinto and Chevrolet Vega. In the international poll for the award of the world's most influential car of the twentieth century the Beetle came fourth after the Ford Model T, the Mini, and the Citroën DS. |