Volkswagen Beetle

Volkswagen Beetle, engineered by Ferdinand Porsche Few shapes have been asked to do so much for so long. Ferdinand Porsche drew up the people's car in the mid-1930s, and its rounded body stayed recognizably the same until the last one left the Puebla plant in Mexico on July 30, 2003, after 21,529,464 had been built since World War II. That continuity is the design lesson: a form simple enough to be built, fixed and loved by millions without ever needing reinvention. MoMA's collection holds a 1959 Type 1 sedan. The car's origins in Nazi Germany are part of its story, and the long postwar life is what made it a design classic.