the first thing they teach in school about refinishing a car is " if the factory paint is still sticking and rust free, leave it on". when you strip it chemically you'll lose all the paint and primer and more importantly, the factory chromating. there is NO way you can duplicate that quality, don't even kid yourself that you can even come close.
also, the car survived 40+ years without nothing being done, it'll survive another 50 years easy just by spraying waxoil in the right spots without painting it. everybody wants a restoration or repaint taken to the extreme on a car that will never be exposed to snow or salt, and usually never get rained on. the trucks i paint get sent to the worst places on earth and get treated like garbage, and even with no pretreatment, just epoxy primer and polyurethane topcoat, they hold up fairly well. just think how they well they would hold up if they were treated like your beetle. both my beetles have rust yes, but they are fairweather cars and the rust they came with still is unchanged in the 15 years i've had them. and i've done nothing, not even wd-40 rustproofing.
so take the advice of someone whose painted and powdercoated more old and new stuff than you can imagine, if you need it stripped, get it blasted, and when you prime use epoxy, nothing else. and for the spots you can't get to, krown rust control. your great grandchildren will probably drive you car that way.
