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It was not so long ago that a certain dictator proposed that every person with a reasonable income should be able to own a car. While the construction of military vehicles initially took precedence over his idea’s execution, a couple years after his brain-case was shattered by a bullet, the “people’s car” started coming off the assembly line. We remember this moment as the birth of the Volkswagen Beetle, which remains the most popular car in history.

The Beetle’s success was not rooted purely in its robustness as a vehicle, but also in its price. As a vehicle most anyone could afford, the Beetle left behind a legacy that the “new” Beetle could not match, in part because of it’s inflated price tag. Some companies proposed cheaper, less featured cars that were still performance-oriented, which were more economical than similarly “trendy” vehicles, though these concepts never emerged for production.

In Europe, where the Beetle was born, French company Renault intends to release the Logan, a sub-10k vehicle that hearkens back to the days when nearly any family could put a Beetle in the garage. Now, Toyota intends to build a similar vehicle that is even cheaper in cost. With Toyota’s track record, and its likely growth to becoming the largest automaker in the world (soon surpassing the heavyweight champion General Motors), a new people’s car could very well manifest in the next few years. The only downside is that a spiritual successor to the original Beetle would mean more cars on the road, and that doesn’t bode well for a transportation infrastructure that already needs significant work in most metropolitan areas.

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