new beetle

another of my wee reviews.....

vw beetle tdi

ok, so by the fact im calling it a tdi, i guess you have figured out that this is the 'new' beetle we are talking about here...i just wanna clear one thing up right now..before we go ONE sentance further..this car aint a beetle..no way.... no how.... not ever!! a beetle, a real beetle, is about as useful a mode of transport for a family as a wheeled teepee would be..slow, noisy, draughty....and thats the beetle im talking about, not the teepee. the original kdf wagen is an unlikely mixture of fascist motoring utopia and 60s san fransisco love child..much more than the sum of its parts...in short, a beetle, an original one, has been, and will continue to be, all things to all men..it is more than a car, more than a convenient way to get from a to b without getting wet..it is, if not a style icon, a lifestyle icon. the new beetle is just a car.

now now...pick your toys up and put them back in the pram...im not for one minute suggestin the older one is a better car..that would be ridiculous...plainly the new 'beetle' is a much better mode of transport than the old air cooled chunter, even at its most developed, could ever have dreamed of being. the new beetle is, to me, like the likeable grandson of a wonderfully bright, wonderfully charismatic, wonderfully resourceful old guy you know from the pub. the grandson goes to university, he is switched on, he is well rounded, emotionally and physically stable, reliable and caring.....he seems terribly familiar, yet strangely distant to those who have fond recollections of gramps, and deep down, he yearns for the universal appeal his elderly relative had, but sadly knows no matter how much he tries, its never gona be enough..the old beetle, like the kids grandad, casts a giant shadow .

ok, so now your thinking im not a fan of new beetle...iv damned it with faint praise and let that be an end to it......wrong....i was prepared to hate the darn thing. it is, after all, merely a golf in a comedy wig. it reminds me of when your staid, straight laced uncle gets leak at a new year and comes in the room with a tea cosy on his head in an attempt to be perceived as zany..funny....hell, interesting..but we all know under that tea cosy beats the heart of a librarian....and how many interesting ****** librarians do you know???.....yet..yet.....the styling, wildly decried as a cynical marketing ploy, perhaps rightly so to a certain extent, does work. the car shares its silohuette if nothing else with grandad. its certainly more interesting to look at than another bloody diesel golf. i have driven many golfs, and they are excellent cars if a bit of a dullard when you wanna party. they dont so much move the game on, more nudge it continuously in the right direction with an almost inaudible, apologetic cough and excuse me.

a golf, make no mistake, is one dull place to sit. i sometimes imagine that if you were to stand on the crumbling edge of an abyss long enough, staring into its comforting, endless emptiness, its emptiness would become the very substance that fills your life..you would become able to discern between different types and shades of emptiness and even start to crave the chance to quantify the quality of the nothingness all around you...i imagine this nihilistic nothingness is what it feels like to sit in a golf for more than half an hour, work in mcdonalds or watch jeremy ****** kyle for more than two minutes.....big mac sir????.....(never saw that curve ball comin did ya.....)

sitting in the beetle is much more pleasant..really...the big front window curves far away from you, but makes you feel like you are sitting in a bright airy space. the car feels big..much less claustraphobic than its grey suited twin. its trim and seats are typically germanic quality but it is a feel good cabin...it is a good place to spend time...the high roof and big windows make you feel relaxed, calm.....the instruments too hark back to ze good old days but with more of an austere elegance than the wurlitzer like tacky way the bmw mini has tried to 'retrofy' its cabin with its chrome rocker switches and fisher price plastics....the beetle is more hard rock cafe than mcdonalds..still, undeniably a pastiche of a fondly remembered yesteryear, but at least an enjoyeable one.

to drive the car is very much standard issue vag diesel..ie not the most refined, a bit grumbly, but quick enough in that 'happy to help' handfulls of toque fashion they always are and as parsimonious as cliff richard at a beer drinkers and hell raisers rock festival. the grumbly, slightly uncouth diesel chunter actually suits the beetles 'feel'. the car feels more akin to its utilitarian grandad with this lump comfortingly rumbling away, indeed, the whole feeling of the minimalist high quality of the cabin made me wonder why vw didnt market a basic tdi bug with rubber matting and neoprene seats or the like specially for the surf and yoof set. the beetle i drove was a black car with ubiquitous dark veedub interior, but i felt this suited the car much more than the lookitme bright colours most of them are finished in. the slightly shorter overhangs at each end also serve to make the beetle feel more planted, more 'chuckable '(cliche warning, cliche warning!!) than a standard golf. it is definitely a nicer car to drive than a standard mk3 or mk4 golf tdi.

ok, ok...so most buyers wont give a stuff about how the thing drives. they are the mugs who have fallen for the whole 'beetle lifestyle' image. the magpie buyers..the ones who see the newest shiniest bauble and must have it. i love these buyers...cos they lose interest pretty chubby quickly and move onto the next big thing...bmw mini..fiat 500...both essentially good cars, but both overshadowed by the fact that, like the beetle before them, they will initially suffer a crisis of idnetity because the magpies get 'em first....but the magpies do get 'em out on the roads...and in big numbers cos these marketing led buyers make up a big chunk of the new car market.....so when they lose interest we have a glut of used examples and that keeps the prices down for the impecunious, opportunistic second hand buyer..ie..ME......

so dear reader, im gonna ask y'all to suspend your immediate, knee jerk reaction of distaste and dismay at the beetle and cars of its ilk and spare a thought for the people who buy them BECAUSE THEY LIKE THEM..and whats wrong with that????..in this day and age of oppressive taxing, rising fuel prices, motorists being pilloried by press and public, congestion charges, traffic jams etc..etc....isnt the most important thing your car can do for you not simply to make you HAPPY????.....if we can agree on that one point, then can we imagine that for many people, owning a car with what they see as a personality, a character of its own, can be at least as important as those of you for whom the pleasure of ownership comes from owning the latest, fastest or best handling seven quillion horespower super hatch????...different people have different needs.....just as some of us need a good kick in the Harry Rollocks now and then, some of us need a cuddle...people like my mum.....whos beetle im writing about...!!!..(sorry ma!!).... .im pretty sure my mum feels like her beetle gives her a cuddle every time she opens its door...makes her smile every time she sees it....it doesnt matter a damn to her, or people like her, whether the car can accelerate like a jet fighter or can corner like a slot car. she bought it cos she liked it.....the new beetle gives people like my mum loads of smiles per gallon and the roads are a nicer place for it. imagine the bland uniformity of a roadscape where every second car was a golfocusastra......


....so, the new beetle...just a bloody golf with a hat on aint it!!!??....well yeah..but is that such a bad thing??...at least its not another uniformly bland eurobox...yer drunken librarian uncle gets to take his tea cosy off on new years day, the beetle wears its 24/7!!!..you cant deny that the standard golf is a better, more rounded, more practical car..indeed, most cars in the beetles market segment are significantly better than it in at least one area....its just that neither can you deny that the beetle, for all its obvious faults, is a much NICER car than its plain jane sibling.... so, a bit like its illustrious forefather, for many of its owners, the noughties beetle is much more than the sum of its humble parts..not for me, i daresay not for you...but for some, cars like this are the perfect antidote to the daily drudge....

What flower did you have in the vase?

purple one..obviously...made me want to vomit..

If your mum likes it, it's in my books