Even experts in the plant must stop often and ask before finding it in the corner of Hall 25 in Puebla, some 120 km east of the Mexican capital.

The little old workhorse will likely be far from mind when Mexican President Felipe Calderon meets VW boss Martin Winterkorn in Puebla to celebrate quite a different watermark: the production of the 1-millionth model of its successor, the New Beetle, which is worldwide exclusively in production in Puebla.

It’s been 10 years since VW introduced the New Beetle. This year, the factory’s 16,000 workers are hustling to beat their old record from 2000, when 425,000 units were produced.

On the sidelines of the celebration in Puebla, the seat of the Mexican motor industry, Winterkorn and Calderon are to also discuss what’s next with German-Mexican auto production.

The cooperation already has quite a legacy, going back to the old Beetle.And even though the last Beetle in the world came off the Puebla assembly line in 2003, there is still a small corner of the huge 300-hectare factory dedicated to keeping it alive.

Amidst the assembly lines that crank off the modern Bora, Jetta, Golf Variant and New Beetle, a small team of eight workers builds 40 Beetle engines every day in the confines of a few hundred square metres.Germany stopped production of the Beetle in 1978, but the plant in Puebla kept making them largely for the local and Latin American market, where they were hugely popular. The last new Beetle emerged in 2003, the last of the 21-million-plus Beetles ever built.It’s not clear if the New Beetle will ever reach those numbers – or reach into the hearts of drivers the way its predecessor did.

[economictimes.indiatimes.com]