Discovery Channel’s "Shark Week" has been on the air for 25 consecutive years. That's two years longer than "The Simpsons." For this year’s series, "Shark Week" is connecting with the longest-running car model ever, the Volkswagen Beetle, for a promotional tie-in that plays off of the car’s iconic shape.

Volkswagen and the Discovery Channel collaborated with marine biologist and shark expert Luke Tipple, a frequent guest on the program, and his engineering team to create a Volkswagen Beetle shark observation cage. “We wanted the integration to be authentic and fit naturally with the Volkswagen brand, imprinting our signature style on 'Shark Week,'” said Justin Osborne, a marketing executive for Volkswagen of America, in a news release. “The Beetle shark cage plays on the silhouettes of two of the most iconic images, the shark fin and the Volkswagen Beetle.”

The Beetle-shaped cage is made from protective aluminum pipe, like the standard shark-observation apparatus. But this one is outfitted with twin propellers and an onboard air system and, Tipple says, the entire cage varies only a quarter-inch in spots from the landlubber Beetle. According to The New York Times, the 19-inch alloy wheels on the "Shark Week" Beetle are the same optional equipment on models available at dealerships.

"Shark Week" viewers can watch the design, construction and submersion of the Beetle cage in a series of three one-minute segments that began airing Sunday on the program, which aims to put viewers “in the driver’s seat as it cruises along the ocean floor,” Volkswagen said.

The Beetle has a long history of waterborne adventures, although on the surface and never underneath it. Volkswagen aired a famous commercial in the 1970s of a floating Beetle to show that the car is watertight, and Beetles have motored on Lake Michigan and through the Straits of Singapore.

In 1963, a Beetle crossed the seven kilometers of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the mainland, and a seven-hour cruise in the Irish Sea from the Isle on Mann to the U.K. proved the Beetle seaworthy -- all without a single reported shark attack.

[Source: The New York Times]