Not really the same, since it was VW itself building them, not some
other company who had bought tooking, rights, etc. And this was a multi
million car production, not some nostalgia botique.
The Mexican govt. made a troublesome pact with VW back in the 70s. The
economy was hot and demand for cars huge. The govt. wanted to have lots
of inexpensive (so manyt could afford them) domestically produced (so
they would employ many Mexicans) cars available to the public to avoid
social and political unrest and keep the economy growing. VW was the
only company that could do what they needed, but the beetle was a rather
high pollution vehicle. So they made a deal with VW to keep pollution
controls lax in return for VW vastly increasing their investment in
Puebla and producing many more cars. The beetle was killed off in the US
by exhaust requirements as much as anything else. It's harder to
minimize emissions in an air-cooled car with greater operating
temperture variations than a water-cooled one. Mexico City suffered from
all those auto emmissions trapped in a valley at high altitude. It
already had serious air pollution problems that were made worse. I
haven't done business in Mexico or had family htere for many years, so I
don't know what's happened since on that front.
I do know I rented a Jetta in Cabo last December.
Moose
halpert@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>I believe something similar was the case with the original Volkswagen beetle
>still being made
>in Mexico until just this year.
>
>Larry
>
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