https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/be4cc113-bfe6-4854-a812-0ee812a80ba2 This silent 16mm film shows an experiment undertaken to show how a small, light car like the VW Bug could be driven for long distances at low cost due to its fuel efficiency. At the start of the film a brand new VW Beetle is prepared for the trip with a visit to a full service gas station. A clock is used to record the time and a shot shows the odometer (3:50 mark), and then at the end these are revisited. In roughly nine hours the car travels 426 miles, although it's unclear exactly whether that equates to 10 gallons of gas or not. The only thing shown at the end of the film is that the car still has gas in the tank -- but it's not known how much. In any case that figure -- 42 miles per gallon -- would have been far in excess of what the Beetle would normally have achieved (Wikipedia suggests it could normally have a 32 mpg rating). Even if it was lower than 32 mpg, it still would have easily eclipsed the fuel efficiency of almost any American car made in this era. BTW it's unclear when the film dates from -- although one hint is that the price of gas shown at the 1:47 mark appears to be 35 cents per gallon including 10 cent tax. An on-line source said that would equate to 1973, but that seems too late for this film. More likely the film dates to the mid-1950s based on the other cars shown. If you have any thoughts, please weigh in. Most of the movie takes place on the Salem Freeway #99 in the vicinity of Medford, Oregon and you will see various shots around there, on the roads, driving through downtown towards Salem (3 minutes) and towards Medford at 8:20. Downtown Medford is seen at 9:00. At 11:00 the car visits an inspection station. The car is shown operating in various weather conditions including rain and sleet. When did the first VW Beetles arrive in the USA? In January of 1949, a Volkswagen “Type 1,” or Beetle, was shipped to New York City by Ben Pon, Sr., a Dutch businessman and the world's first official Volkswagen importer. The Volkswagen Beetle is a two-door, four-passenger, rear-engine economy car that was manufactured and marketed by German automaker Volkswagen (VW) from 1938 until 2003. The need for this kind of car, and its functional objectives, was formulated by the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, who wanted a cheap, simple car to be mass-produced for his country's new road network. Hitler contracted Ferdinand Porsche in 1934 to design and build it. Porsche and his team took until 1938 to finalise the design. With 21,529,464 produced,[13] 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 from 1945 on (mass production had been put on hold during the Second World War) when the model was internally designated the Volkswagen Type 1, and marketed simply as the Volkswagen (or "People's Car"). The original 25 hp Beetle was designed for a top speed around 100 km/h (62 mph), which would be a viable speed on the Reichsautobahn system. We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: "01:00:12:00 -- President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference." This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA1tH3JWYZ4 Mirrored from Periscope Film (https://www.youtube.com/@PeriscopeFilm) Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:58:23 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://peertube.dngr.us https://peertube.dngr.us/lazy-static/avatars/41a6fee9-7f57-42d0-a5fc-5db4f1af2e31.png https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/be4cc113-bfe6-4854-a812-0ee812a80ba2 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://peertube.dngr.us/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.