In what German city did Karmann build the final Beetle convertible?

Karmann built the final Beetle convertible in Osnabrück, Germany.

Wilhelm Karmann’s coachbuilding company developed and produced the four-seat Beetle Cabriolet under contract for Volkswagen. The company was based in Osnabrück, a city in Lower Saxony that became closely associated with Volkswagen’s convertible manufacturing.

Karmann’s Beetle convertible entered production in 1949. Converting a fixed-roof Beetle into a safe open car required structural reinforcement, a redesigned body and a folding fabric roof, so Volkswagen assigned the work to a specialist rather than building it on the standard sedan line.

The last original Beetle convertibles left Karmann’s Osnabrück facility in January 1980. This date is sometimes confused with the end of ordinary Beetle production in Germany, which came earlier, or with the later New Beetle convertible, whose production history involved a different generation. Osnabrück therefore identifies the final Karmann-built Beetle Cabriolet, not the location of every Beetle ever produced.