The Love Bug – or Herbie as he was more affectionately known – was the first in a series of movies made by Walt Disney Productions that starred a white Volkswagen racing Beetle.

It was actually based on a 1961 book entitled Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford.

The movie follows the adventures of Herbie, his driver Jim Douglas (Dean Jones), and Jim’s love interest, Carole Bennett (Michele Lee).

It also featured Buddy Hackett as Jim’s enlightened, kind-hearted friend, Tennessee Steinmetz, a character who creates “art” from used car parts, and English actor David Tomlinson, who portrays the devilishly evil Peter Thorndyke.

Surprisingly, it went on to become the highest-grossing film of 1969, and several sequels followed: Herbie Rides Again, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Herbie Goes Bananas and the most recent, Herbie: Fully Loaded, with Lindsay Lohan.

However, before the first film began production, Herbie was not envisioned as a Volkswagen Beetle.

Indeed, Disney set up a casting call for a dozen cars to, in effect, audition them.

The cars were kept outside the film studio so the production crew could examine them during lunch breaks, before “casting” the winner.

Apparently there were a few Toyotas, a TVR, a handful of Volvos, an MG and a pearl-white Volkswagen Beetle.

And this, believe me, is where it gets interesting.

The crew would walk over to each car to try and cast it, testing them by kicking the tyres or playing with the steering wheel.

As legend goes however, when they came across the Volkswagen, they simply reached out and petted it...

Herbie’s trademark 53 racing number was chosen by the film’s producer Bill Walsh, who was a fan of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball player Don Drysdale (Drysdale’s jersey number, later retired by the team, was 53). Walsh also gave Herbie his trademark red, white and blue racing stripes, though no-one knows quite what inspired this paint job...

One of the modified racing Herbies in the original Love Bug featured a Porsche 356 engine, brakes and Koni shock absorbers.

In addition, all the Herbies in the first film had their VW badges removed from the hood and featured plain non-VW hubcaps.

However, the three 1970s-era sequels produced do promote the Volkswagen name, as sales of the famed Beetle had begun to slip by the 1970s.

Interestingly, before Disney plumped for the title The Love Bug, other titles consided included The Magic Volksy, Wonderbeetle and Thunderbug.

Scary isn’t it?