These days even those people who know cars have difficulty sorting out at a quick glance which current model is which - so imagine what it must be like for Mr or Mrs or Miss Average. They simply see all cars of the last decade as boring look-alike boxes, each with the personality of a jar of Vegemite. Years ago there were huge V8-powered sculptures of US sheet metal, little brick-shaped Minis, elegant and flowing Jaguars, lithe and delicious Alfas. More recently there were new and exciting Commodores, uprightly square Falcons, and petite Geminis.
But now?
On the secondhand market, what can you buy for under $25,000 that's less than five years old and has character and excitement and shape and presence? Not a Camry or a Commodore or a Pulsar or a Corolla, that's for sure.
But what about the Beetle?
Sure it's a reinvention of a shape, a reliving of past glories rather than the innovation of new breakthroughs.... But it's also the best value in headturning, egocentric and eccentric personality.
This is a car that you won't confuse for the adjoining boredom-mobile in the shopping centre carpark. This is car that makes a statement simply unachievable by an Astra with alloys. This is a car that can put a smile on your face as you walk up to it after a long day beating your head against the office desk.
And the best thing about it? It's actually drives like a damn good car.
With the price of used Beetles dropping below the $25,000 barrier, we decided to put ourselves in one for 1000km and four days. In addition to long-haul country cruising, we also spent time in the city and suburbs, packed the car with people and luggage, and drove it through conditions that ranged from torrential tropical downpours to fine sunny weather.
And - with the exception of a couple of notable glitches - the Beetle impressed and refreshed.
Of course it's the body shape that the Beetle is all about. That odd series of semi-circles - wheel guards, front bonnet, the curve of the roof and rear glass and boot lid. Well, in this case not a bootlid but rather a hatch. Despite the new Beetle having now been around for two years, we were still asked several times a day - especially by old people - whether the engine was in the back. In fact, under its skin the Beetle is really a Golf - so it has front-engine, front-wheel drive conventional underpinnings.
The shape of the car has forced on the designers some, er, interesting internal packaging. You sit well back from the panoramic windscreen - in fact, for some it's a bit disconcerting viewing the world through what feels initially like a widescreen TV. The front pillars are thick - although their distance reduces their vision impairment - and you are placed almost centrally within the car's wheelbase. In fact, the front seats are adjacent to the B pillars. With the driver and front seat passenger heads positioned beneath the very middle of that curving roofline, you could guess that headroom for these occupants is enormous. And you'd be right. You could also hazard that the back seat passengers aren't so lucky - and again you'd be right. In fact rear headroom is abysmal. Being an adult in the back is a claustrophobic experience - the side windows are small and the glass of the rear screen is bumping into your head. Rear footroom is fine, though.
Best to think of the Beetle as a 2+2 - good front room for two adults, with the rear seat normally folded down to create plenty of luggage space. What's that - children? Actually a couple of kids would be fine - access to the rear seats is quite good, with the front seats lifting and moving forward on a pantograph arrangement. But us? Well, we'd rather be in the front. Up here the cabin is light, bright and airy - despite the largely black interior of the test car.
The area under the hatch is narrow and short - when the rear seat squab is folded up and the seatback laid flat, it becomes narrow and long. To fully fill the load space requires that you lean uncomfortably far forward - the rear hatch line slopes so quickly that the depth of the load area is very shallow towards the back of the car. Add to that the thick bumpers, and loading the Beetle can be quite awkward.
The odd shape of the load area and the lack of rear headroom are the two most glaring shortcomings of following styling cues from an era more than half a century out of date.
But, it surprised us greatly that the list of body shape downsides stops about there. For example, we were sure that with its poor aerodynamic drag and lift characteristics, at speed the Beetle would become quite wayward in its stability. It was nothing of the sort. We thought that the shape would make engine access difficult. It didn't- or no more than in plenty of other recent cars, anyway.
So was everything else about the body design sweetness and light?
Nope.
There's one deficiency which we hope they've fixed in more recent models of the car. On the 59,000km test Beetle, each time that either door was shut, the associated B pillar could be seen moving - flapping around in the breeze almost. One result was that it often felt as if the door hadn't been closed properly - there was no reassuring 'thunk', just a sort of dull 'doooiiiing' as the pillar bounced and wobbled. Part of the blame can be assigned to the flatness of both the doors and pillar - most car shapes curve these items to give them strength as well as styling presence. But on the Beetle the doors are almost completely flat (and so they dent very, very easily) and probably have far less strength than is common on current cars. Another hint to this weakness is that all Beetles come with side airbags, in addition to the normal frontal pair. Perhaps side bags are needed to give adequate side-impact protection?
But the chances of driving off the road and into a tree or other obstacle are much lessened by the Beetle's very good handling. The Beetle - shod in this case with 205/50 A539 Yokos on 16-inch steel rims - gripped very well in the dry. In the wet, the rear roll stiffness felt a little high - the back of the car can become a little skatey if you lift off when cornering hard. But this same characteristic gives great dry-road turn-in, helped by the precision of the steering. The ride is firm but smooths out at speed, while the car feels extraordinarily composed and stable when moving quickly. In fact, it reminded us a little of a late model constant four-wheel drive Subaru in the way it sat on the road. But the drag caused by the poor aero shape can sure be felt at very high speeds - the car struggles mightily over about 170 km/h - although point-to-point or even on a very long drive, the Beetle could frighten many a more prestigious sporting machine.
If the road is downhill, anyway.
In this base model form, the 2-litre engine develops only 85kW and so performance in the 1287kg body is never going to be strong. However - and in contrast to the 1.6-litre Golf that we drove recently - the Beetle is seldom actually embarrassed by its slowness. The auto trans is an intelligent design - unlike old-fashioned autos, it picks the right gears the majority of the time - but it has the same fall-into-gears-with-a-clunk light-throttle characteristic we noted in the Golf. The engine is gruff at high revs, which are easily attained with the low gearing. Like the Golf, the engine also requires a constant diet of high octane unleaded - this is hard to justify when four-cylinder is nothing outstanding.
To our eyes the following of 'old' Beetle styling cues inside the cabin is less of a good thing - the dash lacks an engine temperature gauge but has a (very inaccurate) outside temp display and the tachometer is tiny - while the retention of the ubiquitous Audi/VW steering wheel stalks and some other controls gives a slightly odd overall effect. Air con, a 6-speaker CD radio, ABS and those four airbags makes for a well-equipped - albeit not luxurious - cabin. The excellent seats should also be noted.
So if you're one of those people who soundlessly sneer when you see a new Beetle drive by (why didn't they just buy a Golf?), you're completely missing the point. Most of the Beetle drivers wouldn't be seen dead in a Golf - or a Corolla, or a Pulsar, or a Peugeot 306. They want to drive a car that stands out, that has character and flamboyance and appeal.
And one thing's for sure. Lots of people who decide that they want to make that personal statement with the new Beetle will also be pleasantly surprised by how competent a car they have ended up buying.
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