Volkswagen’s iconic Beetle may be headed for the end of the road in 2018: Report

It may be the end of the road for Volkwagen's iconic Beetle, if a Tweet from a trusted source is to be believed.

Autoline recently Tweeted, "Good bye Beetle. VW to axe its iconic car at end of 2018. Sales are slowing to a trickle and VW needs more CUVs."

According to commentators, given the Beetle's lacklustre sales, the development would not come as much of a surprise.

The current Beetle was introduced for the 2012 model year, but sales had been anaemic for the automaker. In the first three months of 2016, VW has delivered slightly more than 5,700 Beetles in the US, which represented a 42-per cent decline over the previous year.

Part of that drop in sales could be attributed to  the discontinuation of the Beetle TDI, a model under investigation as part of the brand's emissions cheating scandal.

According to Autoline, Volkswagen sold about 109,000 units of the Beetle globally in 2013, two years after the current model went on sale. Production was down to only 64,000 cars last year, even as the company launched limited-edition models to lure buyers into showrooms.

The situation was complicated by the fact that the Beetle's biggest market was the US, where two-door hatchbacks had never been popular and consumers were increasingly trading in cars for crossovers.

Discontinuation of Beetle production would free up capacity that Volkswagen needed as it prepared to launch a crossover offensive in the US. The Wolfsburg-based German car maker would likely start rolling out variants of the brand second-generation Tiguan at its new Puebla, Mexico, factory.

Last year, German newspaper Spiegel reported that Volkswagen was considering retiring the Beetle at the end of its life cycle in order to cut costs.

The publication had also speculated at the time that the automaker would discontinue the three-door version of the Polo, a small hatchback positioned below the Golf but not sold in the US.