Recycled Bugs – Volkswagen Parts

According to Wikipedia, 1974 was the transition year between the Beetle and the new Rabbit:

Volkswagen was in serious trouble by the end of the 1960s. The Type 3 and Type 4 models had been comparative flops, and the NSU-based K70 also failed to woo buyers. The company knew that Beetle production had to end one day, but the conundrum of replacing it had been a never-ending nightmare. The key to the solution was the 1964 acquisition of Audi/Auto Union. The Ingolstadt-based firm had the necessary expertise in front wheel drive and water-cooled engines that Volkswagen so desperately needed to produce a credible Beetle successor. Audi influences paved the way for this new generation of Volkswagens, known as the Polo, Golf and Passat.

The VW Polo was in fact simply a re-badging of the short-lived Audi 50, which had been hastily developed from a saloon design, the Audi 60, which never reached production as an Audi vehicle. However, VW produced it shortly after the introduction of the Polo as the VW Derby. In the rear of the car can plainly be seen that panels are added to the Polo structure to make a “three-box” design of saloon or sedan with a boot or trunk.

The Passat, introduced in 1973, was again simply a fastback (available as either a hatchback or with separate boot) version of the Audi 80, using identical body and mechanical parts, and the Audi 80 was later produced on the same line in Wolfsburg as the VW Passat. Wagon versions were offered for overseas markets, however, for two years, if European customers wanted an estate or wagon version, they had to go considerably up-market and buy the Audi 80GL estate.

Production of the Beetle at the Wolfsburg factory switched to the VW Golf in 1974, marketed in the United States and Canada as the Volkswagen Rabbit until 1985 and as the Golf until 2006, when the Rabbit name was re-introduced. This was a car unlike its predecessor in most significant ways, both mechanically as well as visually (its angular styling was designed by the Italian Giorgetto Giugiaro). Its design followed trends for small family cars set by the 1959 Mini and 1972 Renault 5—the Golf had a transversely mounted, water-cooled engine in the front, driving the front wheels, and had a hatchback, a format that has dominated the market segment ever since. Beetle production continued in smaller numbers at other German factories (Essen and Emden) until 1978, but mainstream production shifted to Brazil and Mexico.

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