What’s the most famous VW Type 1 in the world? Yep, that’s right it’s old number 53, Herbie the Love Bug. Disney’s 1968 film adaptation of the short story Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford introduced the world to the little car that could. The story concerns a possessed Beetle that is magically able to run rings around every other car made on both road and the track. It also has a tendency to be bitterly jealous. The Love Bug is in fact like a G-rated version of Stephen King’s Christine.
It starred Disney stalwart Dean Jones as a down on his luck race driver and Buddy Hackett as his friend and mechanic. Michelle Lee vies with the possessed VW for Jone’s affections and David Tomlinson – another Disney regular – plays the tweedy owner of a San Francisco auto importing business. Herbie the Love Bug is played by a collection of identical english white 1963 Beetles.
There are plenty of other cool cars in The Love Bug, including Cobras, Corvettes, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, a Kelson J4, an unfortunate E-type and, given almost a co-starring role, an Apollo 3500 GT. You also get some great track footage, including on the late lamented Riverside Raceway. It’s all silly good fun, except for the bit (SPOILER ALERT) where Herbie attempts to throw himself off a bridge, that still chokes me up to this day. That’s the only maudlin bit in the whole film as Disney movies of the sixties and early seventies were unlike anything else being made at the time, a throwback to an earlier, and imagined simpler era in which Beetles won races.
If you haven’t ever seen The Love Bug, or haven’t since you were a kid, check out the trailer after the jump.