Road Test
Some Beetle owners are given to silly displays. You know: the menagerie of tiny stuffed animals arranged on the parcel shelf, or the personalized license plate that reads, "LADYBUG." There's a woman who parks her New Beetle in our lot. She would like everyone to know she's a witch. Her bumper sticker announces, "My other car is a broom." In support of that theme, she has placed a broom so it's visible though the car's rear window. It's about three feet long and of the decorative variety that a Martha Stewart toady might hang on a kitchen wall.
With those sorts of individuals floating around, making a mockery of automobiles (the nerve!) and surely forcing a few cringes from the folks at VW, we were a little hesitant to be seen in the New Beetle convertible. Or maybe our lack of excitement over the droptop New Beetle, which is on sale now, was a product of the waning novelty of the New Beetle sedan (introduced in 1998). After all, if your novelty car has run out of novelty, what you're left with is a cute car that's less practical and more expensive than the Golf on which it's based. Or maybe we're insecure in our manly-hood.
But damned if that little New Beetle convertible doesn't endear itself to you. It's slow. It's oh so cute. It's sure late in coming. The most compelling aspect of the New Beetle convertible is, ironically, its relatively reasonable nature.
It's certainly not practical in terms of carrying cargo, but part of a convertible's nature is to be impractical. And for the folks who can't swing the payment on an Audi cabriolet and who don't want to put up with the harsh ride and two-seat capacity of a proper roadster, there aren't many ragtops from which to choose. The Chevrolet Cavalier and Pontiac Sunfire convertibles are gone. The Camaro/Firebird droptops are bye-bye. This leaves a V-6 Mustang and the four-cylinder Toyota Camry Solara, Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder, and Chrysler Sebring in the same low-to-mid-$20,000 price range and with four seats.
None of those cars made our 10Best list. And the New Beetle convertible probably won't, either. But like garage-band music and red licorice, this VW is a simple pleasure.
We were surprised how many folks took a long second look at our convertible. A few years back it was a roadgoing sensation, but the New Beetle sedan hardly draws a glance anymore.
Clearly, VW got the look of the convertible right. The black fabric top has a smooth arc that neatly mimics the sedan's roof. And there's a sassy strip of chrome trim surrounding the cockpit. Lower the top, and it stacks up just the way you remember the old top did, but it doesn't block much of the rearward view. The way the folded top hangs over the steeply sloped rear makes the tail of the car look like that of an old Porsche 911 Turbo with an enormous black whale tail--or at least a cartoon version of one. The fabric top is a thick, three-layer insulated affair with a glass backlight. All but the base-level GL convertibles have standard power tops. Stuffed into the trunk of the New Beetle is a rubbery tonneau cover to tidy up when the top is lowered. Throw it in the garage. You won't need it, but you will need the extra trunk space.
This is because the trunk is less a "trunk" than a "cubbyhole." With five cubic feet of space, the convertible has less than half the cargo space of the sedan and three fewer cubic feet than the outgoing VW Cabrio. On the upside, the trunklid rises with the most entertainingly eccentric motion--like a man who didn't realize he was drunk until he tried to stand.
