Like the tiny locomotive in the child’s book, the Volkswagen air cooled flat four had to overcome a long mountain of skeptics who said it would never work. But work it did. It powered several million Beetles, and eventually became the guts of an American obsession called the Dune Buggy. Its basic design concept lives on it modern Porsche engines and the Volkswagen waterboxer. Even the Subaru flat four has some of the Beetle’s design blood flowing in its veins.