Bug has its swan song
Iconic vehicle’s final iteration has good handling
PUEBLA, MEXICO— Flashy press events to introduce new cars — that’s pretty much my life.
A flashy press event to celebrate the discontinuance of a car? That’s “hen’s teeth” territory. But there we were in Puebla, Mexico, last week to celebrate the demise of Volkswagen’s New Beetle, every one of which has been built here.
How appropriate and not at all coincidental that this event took place during the “Dia de Muertos” (“Day of the Dead”) celebrations that consume Mexico at this time of year.
The swan-song Beetle will be a 2019 model and is on sale now, starting at $24,475.
The original “Käfer” (German for “beetle,” dontcha know...) debuted prior to the Second World War, and went into series production shortly after the war.
It subsequently became the bestselling model in automotive history, arguably so, depending on how you count such things, or if you are a fan of Toyota’s Corolla.
In the mid-1960s, Volkswagen increased Beetle production capacity by opening a new factory here in Puebla — what did they know about building cars in Mexico that nobody else did at that time? — about 100 kilometres southeast of Mexico City. It continued to be built here until 2003.
In 1997, the first New Beetle was introduced here; the “new” New Beetle (“Newer Beetle?”) followed in 2011.
But the sands of time have been shifting, and VW needs the Puebla production capacity to satisfy the irrational yet apparently unceasing demand for more SUVs. VW builds the compact Tiguan SUV here for most of the world save China, as well as Golfs and other cars based on the corporate MQB platform. Something had to go, and the Beetle is being squashed.
Given the limited sales projections for the end-of-life Beetle, there will only be two trim levels available in Canada, “Wolfsburg” and “Dune,” in both coupe and convertible body styles.
(Note for those of you who troll U.S.based websites: the American trim lev- els are considerably different. And contrary to what you might read on one of those U.S.-based websites, it is a frontwheel drive — one of those sites says it is a rear-wheel drive car. So why are you still trolling those U.S.-based websites?)
Only one powertrain is offered, the carry-over 2.0-litre four cylinder turbo producing a modest 174 horsepower, bolted to a six-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission, same as is used in other VW products.
The car will feel familiar to anyone who has driven one before, because not much has changed. Apparently those people who are attracted to this car like it just the way it is.
Too bad the flower vase from the first New Beetle seems to have not been resurrected.
We had a ride around the factory’s 3.5-km test track, which features a wide variety of rough road patches. This is something every production car undergoes, and the car feels well-built and solid.
Although you’d think they could just take the cars out onto Puebla’s public roads, you won’t find too many places in the world with worse potholes. Those poor test drivers...
Every car also goes through an underbody inspection and a high-pressure water leak test. We stayed dry. Good sign. Driving pretty much anywhere in Mexico is, well, let’s say “interesting.”
Traffic is nuts, everything seems to be under construction and you’d think that they have a “drive left” rule, as if this were England. But we survived. Given that Puebla is some 2,200 metres above sea level, and that turbocharged engines are supposed to have an advantage in high altitudes, it was a mild surprise that the engine seemed to have some challenges keeping up.
Acceleration was leisurely at best.
The casually shifting slushbox transmission didn’t help.
It doesn’t make it easier to massage the transmission by hand, partly because of the works-the-wrong-way manual override — it’s back to upshift and forward to downshift. Why is this wrong? As I have often pointed out, think about which way your body weight is being transferred as you are accelerating and decelerating: isn’t the correct way to do it obvious? Apparently not, and these are German engineers at work here..
But the feeling even among VW’s employees is that things like performance, handling and engineering don’t matter much to Beetle customers. They just want to own this car.
At least owners should be reasonably comfortable, because the car handled the Beirut-by-night road conditions well.
We drove both coupe and convertible models, although the bright sunlight was playing havoc with my co-driver’s even-whiter-than-mine skin, so we limited our top-down time to the bare (ho, ho) minimum.
As always with all Beetle rag- tops going back to the original, the folded roof sitting above the trunk reduces rearward visibility. Thanks be to the backup warning system.
The steering felt fine, and the full compliment of high-techery is either standard or available.
So, the last-gen New Beetle is an ancient concept brought as up to date as possible. But if you want one, better get your order in soon, because when they’re gone, they’re gone. Will there ever be another Beetle? I wouldn’t rule it out. Rumours of a battery-powered Beetle make no more sense than a battery-powered anything.
That said, the iconic shape still resonates within VW, and with many customers.
When people get tired of climbing up into massive, inefficient trucks, maybe a fourth coming of der Käfer might be, um, forthcoming.
Beetle fans can only hope.