Fact1: film stars Dean Jones as returning champion race car driver Jim Douglas riding mechanic Wheely Applegate, Fact2: Diane and Lancia crash into lake towards end of race, Fact3: Herbie and Jim manage to save car and woman from drowning, Fact4: Jim saves life and witnesses Herbie towing Lancia out of lake, Fact5: fact of scheme is revealed near end of movie
Output: The film stars Dean Jones as returning champion race car driver Jim Douglas, joined by his somewhat cynical and eccentric riding mechanic Wheely Applegate Don Knotts. Together with Herbie, the Love Bug, a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle, they are participating in the fictional TransFrance Race, from Paris, France, to Monte Carlo, Monaco. According to dialogue, they hope to stage a racing comeback in the event. For the TransFrance Race, Douglas and Herbie have three major opponents: Diane and her Lancia unfortunately crash into a lake towards the end of the race, and with victory in sight. But Herbie and Jim manage to save both car and woman from drowning. Because of this, she soon changes her attitude toward Jim after he saves her life and she witnesses Herbie towing her Lancia out of the lake. All three watch as Herbie crawls next to the Lancia and the two cars hold doors like holding hands. When Herbie seems to have trouble restarting because of being determined to stay with the Lancia, Diane is now fully convinced that cars can have minds of their own because she now knows her own car is alive as well. She encourages the little car not to relent in the quest for victory in the TransFrance Race with the added agreement of the Lancias horn, and bids Jim good luck with a light kiss on one cheek. With Diane now out of the race followed shortly thereafter by Claude Gilbert in the aforementioned crash, Jim pursues Von Stickle through the streets of Monte Carlo, combatants in a thrilling duel for the win. In the end, though, Bruno von Stickle is overtaken by the little car in the famous tunnel of the Formula One race track, Herbie outracing him by outsmarting him through driving upside down on the tunnel roof. Jim drives Herbie to victory for also according to dialogue the 20th time in their careers. As the film progresses, two thieves, Max Bernard Fox and Quincey Roy Kinnear, steal the famous Etoile de Joie French for Star of Joy diamond and cleverly hide it in Herbies fuel tank Herbie was fitted with an external fuel filler cap for this film  a 1963 Beetles cap actually being inside the front luggage compartment in order to avoid being captured by a swarm of searching policemen. But little did they know that they picked the wrong car to hide it in, because of one car that was alive and had a mind of its own. That causes them to blow every chance they get in getting back the diamond they hid in him. Because of this, and on a count of an attempt where they at one point tried to threaten Jim and Wheely at gunpoint to relinquish the car to them, an encounter from which Herbie managed to escape, and thanks to a misunderstood conclusion thereafter that Diane would have tried to mastermind the whole event. Subsequently, Herbie is placed under the protection of the French police. It is also revealed not too far in that Inspector Bouchet Jacques Marin, also known as Double X especially as a code name to the thieves, is the mastermind behind the museum robbery, though the fact of his scheme is revealed near the end of the movie. It is the eager, and somewhat kneejerk and unpunctual young detective Fontenoy Xavier SaintMacary, of whom the Inspector is the superior officer, who unravels the mystery of LEtoile de Joie, and has Bouchet clapped in handcuffs. All the way through the plot, Inspector Bouchet appears to have an annoyance and sour attitude towards Detective Fontenoy. The reasons are never plain, but some of them could be due to things that the Inspector tells the Head Official of Monaco about the detective when he tries to persuade him to cancel out a diamond search that the detective ordered for. In the end, Jim and Diane begin to fall in love, as do Wheely and the Monte Carlo trophy girl Katia Tchenko; even breaking a pact they made in the beginning. Most of all, Herbie and Giselle Dianes Lancia fall in love again as well.