You didn't havet o shift with the Autostick if you didn&
Jason have you ever seen a fuel injected Beetle...they do exsists as do fuel injected Microbuses, Fastbacks, Sqaurebacks, 412s, and Kahrman Ghias and all of these could be had with a true auto trans starting in 1973.The Autostick gets its name form the fact that you could shift it if you wanted to or put in any gear and let the car go. The Autostick shift didn't shift automatically but you could put it into first, second, or third gear and start from a stop and it wouldn't hurt the car it was just painfully slow. It was also reffered to in the sexist days of the late 1960's as a his and hers gearbox (his if you manually shifted, hers if you didn't) Oh and the Autostick did have a clutch but it was engaged by pushing down lightly on the gearshift lever. That in turn tripped a micro switch which disengaged the clutch when you shifted. This is why, by the way, you never rest your hand on the gear lever of on autostick Beetle (the clutch will keep engaging and disengaging if you doand that will cause premature failure of the clutch). Of course this was not a normal type of clutch bewcause of the fact that you could come to a complete stop with out disengaging it and not stall the engine. Of course Beetles were so slow anyway and the Autostick option amde it more so and that is why the Autostick option was not at all popular in this country. I have a Beetle shop manual by Chilton to back up this info as well as a neighbor who had a 1970 Beetle with Autostick who told me this as well.
FYI....The Fastback, Squareback, 411, and 412 were all based on the Beetle (the 411 and 412 were based on a stretched version but a version never the less)as was the Transporter, Microbus, and the Kahrman Ghia. Finally,I reiterrate ONLY THE FUEL INJECTED BEETLES FROM 1973 OR SO ON HAD A TRUE AUTO TRANS which their shared with the 412 and the Dasher and later on the Rabbit and Scirocco). With fuel injected Beetle engines VW at last used a true auto trans because the the extra oomph provided by the fuel injected engine would help copmpensate for the power sapping nature of the auto trans (remember this was in the day when auto trans weren't as effiecent as they are now).
FYI#2 1973 is when the Autostick option was dropped from the Beetle in the US (not sure about Europe or the rest of the world though).