Last spring, in an attempt to set a new state record—not exactly sure who is the keeper of such achievements—students at Medaille College (located in the heart of Buffalo) came together to achieve the near-impossible.  The feat?  Cramming 19 college kids into a 2000 VW Beetle.

They did it!  Consider the degree of discomfort, though—that’s 3,000 pounds of cafeteria-fed meat in a space that’s not quite six feet wide with a floor-to-ceiling height of less than five feet.  Plus seats.  Plus a steering wheel.  Plus a gear shifter, which some unfortunate kid had to negotiate.  You gotta want it, Billy!  The whole job took under 10 minutes.

So where does this feat stand in the grand scheme of things?  Well, it may have come perilously close to a world record—a group at Asbury University in Kentucky claimed stake to the Guinness mark after shoehorning 20 students into a Bug in 2010 (the Guinness requirements state that “...students (must) be at least 5 feet tall and at least 18 years of age.”  The Rekord-Klub Saxonia (huh?) acknowledges a claim by students at Penn State Abington in central Pennsylvania that 27 future leaders of our nation squeezed into a Beetle—although Guinness methodology was not followed.  Seventeen people seem to be the limit that can fit into the old-school Beetle, and this feat was most recently achieved in Dade City, Fla.

According to Medaille officials, “Guinness World Records approved Medaille’s attempt at a world record, which is held by a group in Austria that managed to fit 25 people inside a New Beetle.”  In fairness, they did have a bit of a home-field advantage.

Cheers to you, Medaille students—you have set a tight, sweaty bar for other record-seekers around New York State.