James Read:
You will note that the smiling men you see driving Bettles do not have anything in their vases. This is because they are gay men who have chosen another receptacle for the flowers.
Only gay men drive new Beetles? Interesting thought process there James. I'm not even going to go into what you think gay men do with flowers.
I had an original 1302S when I was a much younger man and it was the simultaneously the worst car in history and the one I loved the most, even to this day. I went sideways up a motorway slip road once- scary to say the least and I was always running out of petrol because the fuel gauge was broken. I could reel off a list of potentially fatal flaws with the car but, at the end of the day, the exhaust note alone was enough to make me forget about all of the bad stuff. No other car has ever had that effect on me.
For all that, I would have loved to get a new Beetle as a second car but I never did. It always seemed like a rather cynical, corporate marketing exercise that had no actual connection to the original car. Sounds like a similar story for the new Mini and the new 500, except for the fact that both those cars are fantastic to drive, which negates the cynicism entirely. The new Beetle was never good to drive, it was never particularly easy to use and it didn't reward you for your sacrifice by being a great drive either.
I hate to be negative about it, but- I think the new Beetle concept is inherently impotent all the while it relies solely on an aesthetic appeal to get it's point across. A rear engined rear wheel drive pastiche would be significantly more authentic an experience but who wants to go sideways up motorway sliproads? There has to be some substance behind the new one, some weightloss for sure, some serious rethinking about the root concept and a value for money element that is distinctly missing from the entire VW brand.
Perhaps that's all it is? Perhaps if it was £6000 I'd have got one long ago?
do or do not. there is no try.