{"id":281269,"date":"2019-07-10T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.google.com\/articles\/CAIiEEAzT34JX6QlmJ4Rm0kHueUqFggEKg4IACoGCAowjdMZMOLgBTCswQ0?oc=5"},"modified":"2026-10-11T13:56:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T17:56:45","slug":"addis-ababa-mechanics-keep-old-volkswagen-beetles-running-as-the-last-beetle-rolls-off-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/281269","title":{"rendered":"Addis Ababa mechanics keep old Volkswagen Beetles running as the last Beetle rolls off the line in Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

Volkswagen stopped making the Beetle at its plant in Puebla, Mexico, on 10 July 2019, but in Addis Ababa mechanics keep the original model on the road by stripping old cars for parts.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/figure>\n

An old Volkswagen Beetle among newer cars on a street in Addis Ababa, February 2020 (Dawit.dagnew, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) [file photo]<\/em><\/p>\n

Authentic spare parts for the original Beetle are hard to find in Ethiopia, so mechanics \u201cslaughter\u201d some cars to keep others alive, according to a Reuters report first published in 2017 and republished by The World as production ended.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf one is in a bad condition, we will cannibalise it and give its parts to other cars. That is how we extend their life,\u201d said Ishetu Kinfe, a garage owner in Addis Ababa who has worked on Beetles for six decades. \u201cThe Volkswagen Beetle is a servant car for lower income people. They never fail you \u2014 they take you anywhere and have excellent functionality.\u201d He added: \u201cI wish the Germans had continued producing them. They abandoned them and things started falling apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teferi Markos, a mechanic in the same garage, said: \u201cThey are lovely cars. You get satisfied when you fix them. If you want to change the colour, they absorb any paint.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 8,000 commercial and other vehicles were being assembled in Ethiopia for the home market, about a quarter of them cars, and more expensive imported models were appearing on the roads as a new middle class emerged, Reuters reported. The small Beetle still keeps a loyal following. Some young Ethiopians find it fashionable, while for older drivers it carries nostalgia. \u201cMy brother-in-law owned a Beetle and I learned to drive with it when I was a young student,\u201d said Workineh Kebede, a 41-year-old businessman. \u201cIt is not for economic reasons \u2014 I could afford to buy other cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Beetle grew out of Adolf Hitler\u2019s wish in the 1930s for a cheap \u201cpeople\u2019s car\u201d for German families. After the Second World War it sold in the tens of millions around the world, and in the 1960s it starred in a Disney film as Herbie, the \u201cLove Bug.\u201d Production of the original version ended in 2003; the Puebla plant built the last of the revised model.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong> The World (Reuters)<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volkswagen stopped making the Beetle at its plant in Puebla, Mexico, on 10 July 2019, but in Addis Ababa mechanics keep the original model on the road by stripping old cars for parts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":837532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/old-vw-beetle-addis-ababa-2020.jpg?fit=1280%2C960&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1baB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281269"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837625,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281269\/revisions\/837625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}