I never noticed how carefully the sound was edited in this famous Simpsons clip featuring a VW Beetle: Cold start

The 1996 episode The simpsons, titled 22 short films about Springfield managed to overcome the usual, expected fate of a nearly 30-year-old television episode by spawning a popular meme, the famous Steamed Hams meme. I happened to rewatch the episode recently and noticed a neat little car detail that I’d never noticed before, and unusually, it’s an audio detail.

The detail appears in the most automotive-related section of the episode, in which Nelson Muntz, a bully who, with his typical Jack Chick-like haha laugh, the tables are turned by a remarkably tall man in an orange VW Beetle.

Here is the scene in question. Listen carefully to the sounds:

What I realized is that I believe the audio used for the Beetle engine sound effects is actually a real Beetle. I can’t think of any other time in The simpsons that the sound of a car was specifically chosen to match the sounds of the actual car, but I believe that is exactly the case here.

The air-cooled four-cylinder boxer engine of a Beetle has a very characteristic sound, which I have already examined in detail here.

As I said, I think this is unique in the world of The simpsons; interestingly, the Beetle is not described by name, but only mentioned as a small car. Other cars are sometimes mentioned by specific name and model, such as the AMC Gremlin, especially when this is used in a joke or to advance the plot.

Since we’ve been talking so much about this beetle, let’s see if we can figure out what year it’s supposed to be from. Why not:

Looking at certain details – bumpers, headlights, wheels, taillights, hood – I think I can safely say this is a 1968 or 1969 Beetle. Probably a ’68, because the ’69 had the telltale lines of a rear window heater/defroster that I don’t see here.

The simple “Europa” bumpers, upright headlights, ventless hood, and lack of an internal air vent behind the rear window all point to a 1968 or 1969 model year. The taillights don’t quite match, but almost everything else does.

In case you’re wondering, the owner of the Beetle is named Ian and is 8’2″ tall, making him taller than the 7’5″ Wilt Chamberlain that VW tried to cram into a Beetle in 1966. Ian is based on Ian Maxtome-Graham, a producer and writer on the series, who was 6’0″ tall.

In The simpsons Universe, I believe there is evidence that VW Beetles were sold in America well into the 1990s, unlike our universe where America got its last Beetles (convertibles only) in the 1979/1980 model year. I say this because I believe this is an ad for a Beetle in a newspaper that Homer read in a 1997 episode of the show:

The black and white photo and the simple, minimalist style of the ad seem to be reminiscent of the famous VW ads by Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) from the 1960s and 1970s.

I’m glad we had the opportunity to go through all this.