VW New Beetle 2.5: Road test

Nice road test with the VW New Beetle 2.5 by the VWvortex guys.

Don't call the New Beetle "retro." It may be styled in the image of Volkswagen's famous Type I, a fourth-generation Golf in the body of a snub-nosed, high-roof coupé. It may even share its name with the air-cooled käfer and be responsible for re-introducing legions of kids to the game of punchbuggy. But retro it's not.

"Being pegged as 'retro' really paints the car into a corner," explained my friend Tonya, whose yellow New Beetle was parked in front of a café where we were having coffee. "Because if it's supposed to look like an older car, then you can't really redesign it, can you?"

And that was the puzzle faced by Volkswagen in 2005 as the venerable New Beetle slouched into its seventh year on sale, virtually unchanged since its inception. Sure, there were some faint Turbo S and color concept blips on the radar, but by the middle of the decade the car that kickstarted the VW revolution in North America was in need of some jazzing up itself. But its vintage design cues meant that it couldn't really be redesigned.

Could it?

Related news: GermanCarBlog, P4MR, VW New Beetle

Source: VWvortex

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