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This is one of those questions where this is a simple answer, a hard answer and a ridiculously difficult answer. So let’s just start and try and work our way up the tree and see how far we can get.Just to be clear, in this answer I am looking at the legal definitions of those terms, not the commercial ones (in the sense of shareholders’ equity in a company, or homeowner’s equity in a house).“Easy” answer firstEveryone understands the basic concept of a legal owner of property. But in English common law legal systems the law also recognises situations where another person who isn’t the legal owner may have a beneficial interest in the property. This “beneficial interest” is called an equitable interest in common law systems.So, for example, if a couple buy a house together and they each put in half the money, but the legal title is registered solely in the husband’s name, the law will recognise that the wife has a 50% beneficial interest in the house, and that is her “equitable interest”.“Harder” answerCenturies ago English law developed a parallel system of rights which supplemented the common law. These evolved into what today are known as the rules of equity.In certain circumstances these equitable rules will give a person a proprietary interest in legal property that they do not own. This interest can arise in a variety of different ways. The answer in the “easy” answer is what is commonly called a resulting trust. But there are other more complex examples. For example, if a person takes bribes, then although they are the legal owner of the bribe money they are said to hold that money on “constructive trust” so that it is beneficially owned by the person who was the victim of the corruption. Sometimes equitable interests can be created expressly - such as when a person expressly settles property on trust for beneficiaries (such as children who are too young to hold property in their own right). Beneficial interests can also arise under wills. A person who has a specifically enforceable contractual right or option to property is sometimes said to have an equitable interest in the underlying property.But the situations in which equity will respond to give a person an interest in property can get extremely complex. In Lord Napier and Ettrick v Hunter [1993] AC 713[1][1][1][1] the court held that a re-insurer exercising their right of subrogation has a proprietary interest (in the form of an equitable lien) in the underlying insured claim.“Really hard” answerOnce you get to more advanced level thinking, people question whether there really is such a thing as an equitable interest. Is it a type of property interest at all, or is it simply a shorthand way to describe the court’s response to equitable breaches? The former view used to hold more sway, but following the speech of Lord Browne-Wilkinson in the leading of Westdeutsche v Islington LBC [1996] UKHL 12,[2][2][2][2] the latter view now probably as more adherents.If you really want to stretch your brain thinking about this stuff, the UK Supreme Court really managed to tie itself into some serious intellectual knots asking “what exactly is an equitable interest” in Akers v Samba Financial Group [2017] UKSC 6.[3][3][3][3] If you enjoy geeking out on legal stuff, you will love this. But this is some pretty high level esoteric stuff.I particular recommend the speech of Lord Mance at paragraphs [44] to [50], and in particular his analysis of Bill Swadling’s analogy of equitable interests "not [being] carved out of a legal estate but impressed" or "engrafted" onto it.Also note Lord Mance’s comment (at para [44]): “I have found this a difficult issue.” When Jonathan Mance finds a legal issue to be difficult, you know it is time to strap yourself in.Footnotes[1] Lord Napier and Ettrick v Hunter - Wikipedia[1] Lord Napier and Ettrick v Hunter - Wikipedia[1] Lord Napier and Ettrick v Hunter - Wikipedia[1] Lord Napier and Ettrick v Hunter - Wikipedia[2] Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC - Wikipedia[2] Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC - Wikipedia[2] Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC - Wikipedia[2] Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC - Wikipedia[3] Akers v Samba Financial Group - Wikipedia[3] Akers v Samba Financial Group - Wikipedia[3] Akers v Samba Financial Group - Wikipedia[3] Akers v Samba Financial Group - Wikipedia

Question: “What is it like to own the classic Volkswagen Beetle when it was new?”I do not have to guess at this. In the 1960s I drove two of these cars when they were new, a 36 horsepower version and the “more powerful” 40 horsepower car. Lots of memories.First of all the VW Beetle was bog slow. The maximum top speed was 68 mph for the 36 hp car and 72 mph for the 40 hp version. But that was only attainable on a perfectly level road or a down grade if there was no headwind. A breeze would slow the car down. Getting up to that speed took forever. In an era when an American Oldsmobile Super 88 did 0 to 60 in 8 seconds, the German VW Beetle took about 28 seconds! They used to joke that the last VW Beetle to run the quarter mile at Daytona had not come in yet!And that acceleration (?) was only possible if there were no passengers. Put a friend in the right seat and the car was slower still. If two additional people were squeezed together in the back seat as well you actually had to slip the clutch pulling away from the curb in first gear.Driving the VW you learned to take advantage of any down grade to gain speed, go as fast as you could before you climbed even the slightest grade, and once up to speed did your damnedest to avoid having to slow down once you got the VW up to cruising speed. You had to plan way ahead just to maintain speed. And passing another vehicle required strategy equivalent to invading another country.A common insult at the time was to claim that someone’s car or truck was so slow that it was passed by a VW pulling a boat. And a company called MG Mitten sold a large plastic key, like the wind up key on spring motor powered toy cars, that you could attach to the VW’s engine cover.The VW Beetle’s 4-speed plus reverse synchromesh transmission was shifted via a long stalk that came up from the central tunnel on the floor boards. The spindly shift lever was connected to the gearbox by a long rod. This was not a nice short gated gear change lever that neatly snicked into gears. No. It was more like a broom stick that was vaguely connected to the gearbox via rubber bands! The thing had so much play in it that the driver when shifting gears looked like he was rowing the car to provide motive force!The gear shift was not the only quirky control in the VW. The 36 hp version did not have a gas gauge. Rather there was a bent lever sticking out of the center of the firewall just to the right of the driver’s feet. When the engine began to cough because it was running out of fuel (OK. Now imagine that happening while you were passing a truck on the highway.) the driver would take his right foot off of the now unresponsive gas pedal and nudge the bent lever from its normal vertical to a horizontal position. Doing that would turn a valve and connect the tiny fuel pump to a fuel pickup located lower in the front mounted fuel tank safely mounted just in front of your feet giving you an extra gallon of fuel so that you could get to a gas station. After a few coughs the engine would catch.After market suppliers sold a VDO fuel gauge which could be installed in a false radio grill to the left of the VW’s speedometer, which by the way was its only instrument. This was one of the first additions I made to that car.The windshield washer/wiper knob was the other quirky VW control. There was no windshield washer motor. Rather, to actuate the washer pump the driver had to take one hand off of the steering wheel, grasp the wiper control, pull it out, and then rapidly pump the stupid thing in and out until water sprayed from the jets onto the filthy windshield. Later versions obviated this cartoonish system. But they did so by using the air in the front mounted spare tire to supply air pressure to windshield washer fluid tank. This worked OK…except that if you used the windshield washer you also deflated the spare tire. The Germans had a unique sense of humor.The VW’s “heater” was obviously designed for use in a tropical climate by engineers who thought that having cold fingers and toes was a normal state. In Wisconsin the thing was useless. The only way to get warm in that car in winter was to set fire to the rear seat. Being air cooled the VW had no source of hot water for a normal heater core. Thus, the VW used air boxes below the engine which served as heat exchangers “warming” the passenger compartment and attempting to defrost the windshield with waste heat from the engine.The heater had no thermostat. You turned the thing on by giving a knob between the front seats a dozen or so counter-clockwise turns. This wound up a cable that connected to a couple of levers that pulled open metal flaps in the air boxes under the engine. These were, of course, exposed to the snow and road salt and would invariably stick closed and eventually rust out. The “heated” air was supposed to come out of two tiny vents near the sides of the front footwells and slots at the bottom corners of the windshield. There was no electrically powered heater fan. You got whatever flow could be scavenged from the engine fan. And, of course, this meant that if you were driving at city speeds in traffic or stopped at a light there was no heat. The only way to keep from freezing to death in those conditions in a Wisconsin winter was to keep the stupid car in second gear so as to keep the fan speed up.Later VW offered an optional gasoline powered heater called the Samba which resembled the American SouthWind Heater from the 1930s. This did produce a lot of heat. But it also took up most of the space in the already small front mounted trunk and it sounded like a very large industrial hair dryer.The VW weighed 1600 pounds. That was one-third the weight of an American Oldsmobile. It was quite easy for a group of guys to lift one up. And that made the idea of doing that too tempting. Twice friends of mine lifted my VW, carried it, and put it down somewhere other than where I parked it…usually between two posts from which it could not be driven out!The quality of the VW was, at least relative to other imports, quite good. The body was so tight that air would be compressed when you closed the doors making it necessary to fully push them closed. And the tight body construction and the fully sealed under pan meant the the VW would float on water.But the car did have problems. Besides the heater boxes which would invariably rust out, there were other problems. The clutch was actuated via a long cable that ran from the pedal through the central tunnel to the rear mounted clutch. This cable could and did break. The clutch throw out bearing was made of iron and would inevitably wear causing shifting problems and requiring replacement. Knowledgeable owners would know to replace this with a ball bearing unit from the commercial VW Transporter. The front hood, which had to be lifted to fill the front mounted gas tank, was supported by a cheap metal support rather than a spring or a gas strut. This poorly designed support required that the hood be first lifted slightly before being lowered. Gas stations attendants, not being familiar with this stupid design, would attempt to lower the hood like they would do on any hood or trunk lid of an American car, and bend the hood putting a crease in it and requiring a trip to the body shop.There were other problems. VW in the 1960s built thousands of Beetles using plastics that were incompatible with American gasoline. The plastic spacer attaching the tiny mechanical fuel pump to the engine, and through which the actuator rod ran, would soften from exposure to fuel and fumes and seize the actuating rod causing the pump to fail. Many of the parts were cheap zinc based die castings. One of these was the directional signal lever. If you bumped it getting in or out of the tiny car it would break off. VW dealerships stocked these parts by the gross. The little lead acid starting battery was not externally vented or protected and was mounted in the passenger compartment under the back seat. This could and did leak acid and damage the rear floor of the car. The car had no oil filter. There was only a mesh screen, not capable of filtering out anything much smaller than a nut that a mechanic dropped into the engine. That screen was surrounded by a removable plate around the engine oil drain plug.The VW’s little bumpers could not survive the slightest impact without denting and bending. And the bumper guards were below the bumper level of most American cars. Thus, it was common to see VW’s with bent bumpers and dents in the engine cover or front luggage compartment lid. The car could not survive even a low speed crash without being crushed. There were no crush areas. (Well that was where the gas tank was.) And there were no door beams. There was nothing that protected the passengers. The VW by any standards was unsafe.The car required frequent servicing: 3000 mile oil changes and chassis lubes. The plugs, points, condensers, rotors and distributor caps had to be replaced and ignition timing and tiny little carburetor adjusted every 10K miles. Periodic valve adjustments, done from underneath the car, were necessary. But the engine which displaced a relatively large 1200 cc but produced only 36 or 40 hp was so under-stressed that it was quite reliable and this reliability was aided by the simplicity of the air-cooled design.But the VW Beetle had a reputation for starting in any weather. The rear mounted engine which put most of the car’s weight over the driving wheel and the swing axles insured that the car had terrible handling and was very susceptible to cross winds generated by trucks going the opposite direction. But those same design defects made the VW Beetle easy and fun to drive even in deep snow.The original Volkswagen Beetle was, at $1,649, inexpensive to buy. The only optional extra was the $49 AM band radio and antenna. The Samba gas heater which cost about $125 was excellent if you lived in the land of snow and ice, but very few people bought it. The Beetle delivered an actual 32 miles per gallon, which was very good for the time. The Beetle’s popularity meant that there was a dealer who could service the car in every large and medium sized city. And the car was considered to be reliable…especially compared to other small foreign imports.The Beetle worked well as either a second car in a multi-car household or as a car limited to city use or trips of less than 100 miles. Used that way it was fun to own and drive.Its only real competitor in the United States was the more modern 4-door, 845 cc, 36 horsepower Renault Dauphine.But Renault had a much smaller dealership sales and service network which limited its sales in the United States.