Wes writes up a true and honest review on the 2006 New Beetle.
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?
The new standard powerplant for the New Beetle is the same 2.5-liter inline five that’s used in the Jetta, which brings only a meager 150 horsepower to the table to propel the New Beetle’s 3,000 pounds.
With the cruise set at 70, the neobug achieved 31.4 miles per gallon, which bests the EPA figure of 31 and is impressive for this car and engine combo.
VW, Volkswagen, New Beetle, 1.8T, 2.5-liter, TDI, käfer, vwvortex
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