I hear where you're coming from but have to disagree on a couple of points: IMO, ToD without Al or RTR without Antoine would be like going to a Rolling Stones concert without Mick Jagger. I'm not trying to sound pompous in regard to TSD, but I was one of the founders.
As for a car being discontinued, I see I'm clearly different from most, and perhaps I was so passionate about water-Beetles for the wrong reasons. I grew up in the old air-cooleds just like many others. I was devastated at age 20 when VW killed the Bug in the US the first time. When they finally decided to bring it back in 1998, I got interested in the company again. For all that time in between, believe it or not, I was like so many elitist aircooled people and held to the philosophy that a "real" Volkswagen had a rear engine with no antifreeze. I couldn't afford a NB in 1998-1999 because of the waiting lists and the huge markups over sticker even when one became available, so I did the next-best thing: I bought a used Golf. Once I drove a water-cooled Volkswagen, I realized how dead wrong my stubborn attitude was toward "modern" VWs. In fact, to this day, I'm still blown away by how anyone could still prefer an air-cooled relic over a NB or 2012+ Beetle. Yes, they're more expensive and more difficult for DIY mechanics, but they're 1000 times the car that the Type 1 was. And yet, here we are, nearly 19 years into the water-cooled Beetle's tenure, and your typical VW show will still have 10-20 aircooled Bugs for each NB or 12+. And now, the current Beetle's sales have really tanked while something like a Mini Cooper still sells 3 times as many units.... and probably has 300 times as many active enthusiasts....
I love Volkswagen and will never leave the brand, but I also realize the key reason I was so passionate about Post-1998 Beetles was because the people were so different. It didn't matter if you had a showroom-fresh brand new car or a 10-12-year-old one with lots of war bruises. It also didn't matter whether it was Bone Stock or modified to the hilt. Everyone was treated equally, and you definitely won't find that at "regular" VW shows. Instead, you either have the die-hard air-cooled crowd, some of which don't even know what a Jetta, Tiguan, or Passat IS, or a bunch of young tuner kids with slammed, bagged, rides equipped with wheels that cost more than I paid for my entire car. Thus, what I found with the NB/12+ community was acceptance of a late-model bone-stock car, which to the best of my knowledge, one will find nowhere else.
But...along with that, I just can't bring myself to keeping a model that will no longer be made. Of course, nobody knows this for sure, but it's very possible the Beetle's days could be numbered, thanks to the money VW will have to cough up for Dieselgate. Yes, it's reasonable to think that there could be 2017 or 2018 Beetles at shows in 2035 or 2040, but due to low sales and the fact that the aftermarket doesn't support water-cooled Beetles any more than they would a Plymouth Horizon, there will be very few, and the main object I could never get past is the fact that one would never be able to buy a new VW Beetle again. Where I'm decidedly different is that I looked at events like RTR and ToD as first and foremost a message to the rest of the world of automotive enthusiasts that our cars mattered while everybody else placed the friendships first, but the friendships would have never spawned if not for the cars in the first place. If VW takes the cars themselves out of the equation by dropping them from their lineup, the message part becomes irrelevant despite the friendships that remain. That's what I meant when I said a water-Beetle GTG following a discontinuation or even confirmation of an impending axing would be like holding a Dodge Neon or Chevy Cavalier convention. The only thing that would be worse in my view would be if the entire VW brand disappeared, as some predicted at Dieselgate's height. That ain't gonna happen, folks....
And this is why I'm trying to change TSD to an all-VW gathering, so that those with other models that happen to hold the "all people are created equal" dogma from having been a part of the NB/12+ community can still rekindle established friendships and have fun with their cars all in one. Eventually, Passats, Jettas, Golfs, GTIs, Tiguans, etc of today will become tomorrow's vintage VWs, but if the WATER Beetle is killed in a couple of years, that would become more like a Corrado or Fox. Unique, yes, but fellow owners would be few and far between.
