Volkswagen recently made a big to-do about the end of VW Beetle production after a combined total of seventy years over three different forms (the original Bug, the New Beetle and the modern-day Beetle). Why bother? Well, for one, it is highly impressive that only three generations compose total Beetle production, and that two of them have only existed since 1997. That’s fair enough. But the undertone is to say goodbye to everything you thought you knew about Volkswagens, as they move past their “I’m Sorry” pattern from the Dieselgate scandal and on to the new, electrified form.

I’m going to generalize a bit about Volkswagen, but as far as I’m concerned, you can break up total production into epochs: the air-cooled era that saw not only the Beetle, but the Squareback, the Thing, and the Bus; the Rabbit-Dasher-Golf era that started in the early 1970s and carried through to the early 1990s; and modern-day Jetta-Golf-Passat, the land of the VR6, the “Clean Diesel” era, and onwards. Volkswagen is viewing the new electric future as the next epoch of production, it seems.

Except, it’s not the first time that VW has tried to get away from the shadow of the Beetle. Case in point: 1974 Dasher. By and large, it’s a scaled-up Rabbit, with seating for four and seventy-five horsepower on tap from a 1.5L four-cylinder. In the times of fuel crisis, this was VW’s answer to the small, efficient car question. Moving from the air-cooled Beetle to the Dasher was a massive leap forward…will VW do as well in today’s world?