Meet Velvet Red Special Beetle

3rd meeting of the Velvet Red Special Beetles for the 40th anniversary in Einbeck 2024

They will come crawling to Einbeck from all over Germany in June 2024: On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Velvet Red Special Beetle, numerous “Special Beetles” and their drivers are expected at PS.SPEICHER again on Saturday, June 15, 2024, from 9:30 a.m.

The program includes, among other things, the screening of a filmed interview by Marco Strohmeier and Frank Bertram with the VW designer Gunhild Liljequist (1936 – 2022).

Program Sequence:

9:30: Arrival at the parking lot in front of the PS.SPEICHER, which is exclusively reserved for velvet red beetles

11:30: Welcome and short reading by Jeanette Nentwig (“Gunhild Liljequist – From the “Lumpenhanne” to the first female VW designer”)

12:00: Lunch

1:00 p.m.: Screening of an interview with Gunhild Liljequist, recorded on film in 2019, about her time at VW and her work on the special models by Frank Bertram and Marco Strohmeier 

2:00 p.m.: common exit

approx. 3:00 p.m.: Arrival at the Automobile Depot (Bismarckstraße 9, 37574 Einbeck). Participants can also expect coffee and cake there.

Around 5 p.m.: End of the event.

Food and drinks as well as entry to the Automobile Depot are paid for by participants on site.

Important: For planning purposes, the organizers ask that you register by June 1st, 2024 at marco@holtershausen.de or 0170-4704697.

The evening before, on Friday, June 14, 2024 at 7 p.m., there will be a reading at PS.SPEICHER: The editor and author Jeanette Nentwig will read from her new book “Gunhild Liljequist – From the “Lumpenhanne” to the first VW designer”. Admission: 10 euros (official lecture by the FörderFreunde des PS.SPEICHER). 

Tickets Book directly for the reading:https://www.ps-speicher.de/jeanette-nentwig-gunhild-liljequist

Background information:

The Velvet Red Special Beetle is a special edition of the VW Beetle that was manufactured in Mexico for the German market in 1984 and 1985. This makes it one of the last beetles that were officially imported into Germany. In the first half of the 1980s, Volkswagen released new promotional models every year in order to continue to make the now outdated car model attractive to buyers. The special models were intended to particularly appeal to Beetle lovers. 

VW designer Gunhild Liljequist designed a number of special models, including the very opulently equipped “Nostalgia Beetle”, as this edition was initially called internally. The designer, who died in 2022, always described this velvet red special model as her favorite model. Quickly recognizable from the outside by its color and floral ornament, the velvet red one offered lots of chrome and blue-red seating on the inside. The edition of the Velvet Red Special Beetle was limited to 3,000 copies, of which only a few hundred are likely to still exist today. Exact numbers are not known. 

The Velvet Reds met in Einbeck for their 30th and 35th anniversaries. More than 30 vehicles were welcomed at the last meeting in 2019. It is noteworthy that the previously identical vehicles look confusingly similar at first glance, but upon closer inspection of the individual vehicles they also have an individual history and thus also visual peculiarities. For June 15, 2024, even more “velvet reds” are expected than in 2019, which will certainly create a spectacular picture again in this “mass”.

Detailed information at: www.samtroter.de

The three organizers of the meeting will be happy to answer any questions or interview requests:

Marco Strohmeier, Einbeck (0170 – 470 46 97)

Dr. Achim Schwermann, Münster (0160 – 91 14 34 54)

Jeanette Nentwig, Kiel (0176 – 36 31 02 64)