Rear window - forward and rearward development
03/27/2021
Today, the Pretzel Beetle, i.e. the one with the two-part rear window, is cult. But back when it was built, these small rear windows were soon considered extremely unfashionable. And so the rear window grew with every major Beetle facelift. Then there was the "Ovali" and variants with ever larger rear windows followed. It was even rumored that the only thing Pinin Farina wanted to change on the VW Beetle was the size of the rear window.
However, the real "breakthrough" came with the VW Golfin 1974, a huge rear window and generally large window areas thanks to a low waistline. In any case, the cars of the seventies and eighties were the ones with the best all-round visibility in cars, with an almost "barrier-free" view of the outside world, so to speak. And Volkswagen was probably not even among the best.
But over the next few decades, and especially in the last ten years, the rear windows shrank again and so a modern VW ID.3 (pictured above left) offers a comparatively modest view through the rear window, which is also partially covered with film. You could also see better to the rear at an angle in the past. Of course, this is compensated for in modern cars by all kinds of sensors and a reversing camera, which in turn means that drivers no longer know where to look when parking, namely at the monitor or through the rear window.
After all, it is very noticeable that drivers of modern vehicles need significantly longer to park than, for example, an oldie driver in an original Golf ...
