Volkswagen was a sponsor of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. To celebrate handing over hundreds of millions of dollars to enable exciting sports like weight lifting and volleyball, Volkswagen had dressed up a bunch of New Beetles in arty farty Olympic wraps. The cars were lined up at Volkswagen’s China headquarters in the Sanlitun District in Beijing.
The New Beetle on the first pic came with a somewhat traditional Chinese painting-style tree and flower wrap, combined with a Beijing 2008 Olympics logo and a bar code.
The second New Beetle had a Chinese porcelain theme, with the Olympics logo on the door. I liked this one quite a lot. The interior of the cars was unchanged, and by the door panels you can see they were all originally yellow. The seats were dark gray in every car.
This one had a Chinese Opera theme, but the roof wasn’t wrapped. Bit of a lazy effort.
At the time, the first floor of the building was a public showroom, where Volkswagen regularly showed off rare Bugatti’s and Lamborghini’s. Later on they opened a coffee bar there as well. The location of the HQ was brilliant; next door to the bar district and amidst many restaurants and embassies. Sadly, the place became too small for Volkswagen’s expanding operations and the headquarters has since moved to a new building alongside the Fourth Ring Road.
This one mixed elements of traditional Chinese painting with the more modern Beijing Olympics style. It also has the base wheel covers.
This was the wildest one. The red areas are inspired by traditional Hutong doorsm the rest, again, by Chinese paintings.
A New Beetle art work. It was by a Chinese artists but I can’t remember the name. It was really big, about 0.75 meter long, and made out of glass. Very pretty.
China is big. China don’t want no single mascot for the Olympic Games. So they came up with four: the Fuwa’s. Fuwa means good-luck doll. There are five of them. From left to right: blue one = Beibei. Light green one = Jingjing. Red one = Huanhuan. Yellow one = Yingying. Green one with odd hat = Nini.
Two panda bears sharing a notification in a glass cage. China didn’t really use their national animal for the Olympic Games, likely because panda’s aren’t exactly known for being sporty. The backdrop shows famous moments of Volkswagen’s history in China, with a picture of the first locally produced Volkswagen Jetta on the left.