IT WAS ugly, noisy and cramped. But the motoring public engaged in a long, passionate love affair with the Volkswagen Beetle.

Disney even made a film about one called Herbie - The Love Bug - which ran for almost as long as the car itself.

And yesterday a 1938 detailed model of the KdF Wagen, protoype for the Beetle, was sold for £42,550 at a Christie's auction.

It will go to a museum in Stuttgart, the city in which it was built in 1938.

It was the vehicle developed on the orders of Adolf Hitler, who in the 1930s decreed that his Third Reich should have a People's Car.

But only a few had been manufactured when war broke out in 1939. In 1945, as Germany lay in ruins, Volkswagen went back into production, thanks to the efforts of a major in the British Army of Occupation.

He moved the remains of the assembly lines away from the sector about to be occupied by the Russians.

Eventually, more than 20 million were manufactured in Europe, and in Britain the VW became a cult car. Its air-cooled rear-mounted engine built up a reputation for almost invincible reliability.

A specially adapted model crossed the English Channel and microlight planes were equipped with the engines.

There were many engineering and trim refinements over the years. But the basic ugly bug shape never changed.

There are still hundreds of Beetle owners in Britain, who see Hitler's People's Car as a treasure to be preserved for posterity.

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