But that was part of what was great about those old movies, they took the character seriously. Herbie wasn’t some mysterious, magicked creature with eerie powers; he’s more like a normal car, one that just happens to have a whole lot of heart. He’s the little car that could, he wins races not because he has special super-powers, but because he’s got so much determination he wins through sheer force of will. That was always the beauty of Herbie; he wins because he wants it more than any other car on the race track. There’s never any real explanation for why Herbie became self aware, the brilliant Buddy Hackett as Tennessee Williams explains it simply as “something must have gotten caught up in the works”. When he says it, we know that something he’s talking about is pretty simple; it’s love. As a kid, watching all those Herbie movies I always assumed that Herbie was alive because we loved him. Like Tinkerbelle or the land of Fantasia, the Herbie of The Love Bug or Herbie Rides Again existed because we believed in him. Maybe that’s not a particularly logical explanation for how a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle could suddenly learn to drive itself, but it’s a pretty satisfying one.