The Love Bug (1997 film) installment of the "Herbie" franchise, this film is part remake and part sequel, in that the events of the original 1968 film are repeated while the storyline plots to follow 1980's "Herbie Goes Bananas". It can also be thought a prototype of "" (2005), in that both show a later racer finding Herbie in a junkyard and restoring him. The film also marks the first new appearance of Herbie in 15 years, following the Bug's lone television series "Herbie, the Love Bug", which had ended after five episodes. The narrator, Jim Douglas (Dean Jones), unfolds the story of Herbie the
Volkswagen Beetle engineer Ferdinand Porsche and his team took until 1938 to finalise the design. The influence on Porsche's design of other contemporary cars, such as the Tatra V570, and the work of Josef Ganz remains a subject of dispute. The result was the first Volkswagen, and one of the first rear-engined cars since the Brass Era. With 21,529,464 produced, the Beetle is the longest-running and most-manufactured car of a single platform ever made. Although designed in the 1930s, the Beetle was only produced in significant numbers starting from 1945 (civilian production had been put on hold during the Second World War),