Carol’s Column

Where, oh where have all the Beetles gone?

Have you ever noticed how many socks go missing? How, when you place a pair into a washing machine, one goes Awol? How, when you scratch in a drawer looking for a sock partner, it's vanished forever?

Years ago, somebody posed the question to my good friend Betty - did all missing socks land up in a great sock heaven in the sky? Alternatively, was there an insatiable sock thief stalking suburbia?

The question has never been answered and everywhere are single useless socks. It is one of the great mysteries of the world.

There is another. I thought of it this week as I waited in an endless line of traffic waiting to go somewhere important like to work, a shopping centre or to a soccer match.

Think of it. What happened to all the Beetles which were so much part of our road scene? There were millions of them.

Not so long ago, almost every second car was a Beetle. Wherever you looked you saw the cutely curved and extremely distinctive car.

Small, round, colourful and cheerful, the Beetle took over the roads and because they hadn't really changed the design since birth, there were always hundreds to be seen at any moment.

Their owners adored and adorned them, painted them shocking yellow, turquoise or lime, replaced original bumpers with flashy chrome and even turned them into convertibles.

It didn't matter how old or how new your Beetle actually was, it could have been mistaken for anything else. It was a Beetle.

Actually, I believed this ubiquitous cheeky car had been named after John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. I thought for years, that a whole generation of car dealers couldn't spell.

Despite their unsavoury beginnings – remember this was originally Hitler's car for the people built with slave labour during World War 2 - people loved them.

Their quite unarguable cuteness totally cast off their historical baggage.

Besides, it would have been absurd to hold a motorcar responsible for the actions of a megalomaniacal madman and his followers.

Everywhere Beetles abounded.

Some were older than others, more decrepit. Their exhausts blew out black smoke, their engines sounded like the gargling of a thousand opera singers; their speed was that of a lawnmower, but they were Beetles.

Driven by all kinds of people, you'd see more stuck Beetles than any other car. The design was ageless.

Other cars evolved, were bigger, longer, more streamlined and flatter. Engines stuck out further, and then became more neatly contained. Shape changed – from rectangle to streamlined to square - the precursor of virtually every small car we see today. Throughout this, the Beetle remained pure and cheeky, a familiar and reassuring friend.

As youngsters, we went to the drive-in and necked our way through films we never saw. As students we drove them impossible distances. And as new parents, we filled them with babies and all the clobber attached to these miniature humans.

I don't recollect when they started thinning from the road. I remember, I used to count them when stuck in a traffic jam and if I saw more than 100 on the way to work it happened often I'd reward myself with a Peppermint crisp.

Fifty, and I'd eat two.

Where have they gone? It's as if they have vanished into thin air. Did they all land up in scrap yards, have they all been dismantled and crushed, or somewhere, is there a great Beetle heaven in the sky?

How can such an icon disappear?

This morning, on the way to work, I saw something similar, a twinkle of the old version. A sort of modern Beetle, shiny, yellow and rounded.

Not bad, but to tell the truth, not a patch on its great-grandmother. Now that was a car of character. A car with a heart.

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