The Bug is back

By ALASTAIR SLOANE

It's here, the New Beetle. One or two models have been here for a while at art galleries, showrooms and car shows.

It has been on these pages and those of Viva, the popular lifestyle section of this newspaper. It has been parked on city streets - and the old and young alike have kneeled before it.

But it's not really here until it goes on sale, until the price is confirmed, until its Serious Fun marketing message is in place.

Who cares about all the glossy pictures, how it drives around corners, if the engine is in the front or the back, if the castor angles of the front wheels or the suspension settings differ from the original.

It's a Volkswagen Beetle, for Pete's sake. It crossed deserts and swam small oceans. Movies were made about it. People held sit-ins, drink-ins and marijuana toke-ins in it (before Nandor's time).

They turned up at rock concerts and war protests in it. Babies were conceived and born in it. People married in it, died in it, were buried in it.

It had a sort of life-cycle. Dogs liked it. You could talk to the Beetle. Some of those who watched Herbie movies believed it could talk back.

The three-door New Beetle inherits the spirit of the three-door old one. The generation who made the original popular will find the new model more capable, more comfortable, safer and secure - and it won't swap ends if the driver lifts off the throttle going too quick and too late into a corner.

But progress has sanitised it somewhat. It hasn't made it any less interesting, just safer, like they are trying to with sex.

The motion alarm, for example, could put a stop to a bit of how's-your-father in the back seat - but only if the car is locked with the key, says VW. In the mists of the moment, however, cars can somehow lock themselves.

The New Beetle comes with four airbags. These have nothing to do with helping it stay afloat, like the old one could do. They are simply there because carmakers now believe the more airbags a car has the more chance you have of surviving a crash.

The petrol tank no longer sits in front of the dashboard below windscreen level. It is at the rear where petrol tanks should be. It was always advisable to keep the tank topped up in the old Beetle. Running with a low load of fuel meant there was more room in the tank for a build-up of petrol fumes, which in a head-on crash ... you get the picture.

The New Beetle also gets air-conditioning so you no longer have to adjust the front quarter-windows for air flow in the summer, or prise open jammed heating levers in the winter, an infuriating process which often barked knuckles on the handbrake cable.

It comes with ABS anti-lock brakes, too, far removed in theory and practice from the dodgy drum brakes that, when applied, often caused the old Beetle to lurch sideways.

This also had something to do with geometry, with the engine - and therefore most of the weight of the car- being in the back.

The New Beetle engine, a 2-litre four-cylinder petrol powerplant producing 85kW and 175Nm of pulling power between 1750-4600 rpm, is in the front. Things are now on more of a even keel weight-wise.

The engine is quieter than that of the old Beetle because, among other things, it is modern and cooled by water and not air. So the interior, with a design and colours all its own, is quieter too.

Some at Volkswagen believe that in New Zealand it can sell about 200 New Beetles a year, four a week. Others believe it can double those numbers.

Buyers who have a sense of history might want to shell out $37,990 for the five-speed manual model and $39,990 for the four-speed automatic - both in vibrant new colours.

Those who don't care a hoot about history might just buy the New Beetle because they like it. Either way, Volkswagen won't worry. The name will forever remain the same.