Life

SOME PEOPLE'S CAR

He doesn't often take an active dislike to a car, but William Scholes really didn't like the Volkswagen Beetle...

JUST look at it. Isn't it cute and lovely, and doesn't it remind you of Herbie?

No? Me neither. The charms, wherever they may lie, of the Volkswagen Beetle completely escape me.

If you like how it looks - because this is a car that sells only on its polarising appearance - then stop reading now, because your mind will be made up and even if I told you it were pedal-powered and built from papier-mache you would still want one. However, this is a car with a bit of an identity crisis. It's unmistakably a Beetle, but this, the third distinctive model to wear the hallowed nameplate, is also the least Beetley Beetle yet, with a design that attempts to put some distance between it and the original Volkswagen, never mind the last 'new' Beetle, a car so effeminate that it had a vase built in to the dashboard.

For people like me, this should be a good thing because I have never liked the Beetle or flowers above the gearstick, by which logic I should warm to a Beetle which is trying less hard to be a Beetle. If you see what I mean.

But I think that if I was a Beetle sort of person, I would want my Beetle to be a Beetle. The previous car riffed off the original's bug-like styling with greater aplomb; with its lower roofline, the latest model looks like a waxwork of the rip-off of the rip-off that has been left in the sun too long. Parking the styling argument to one side, what of the Beetle's other qualities?

Front seat passengers have plenty of space, with headroom so generous that most could wear a bearskin and still not scrape the roof. Back-bench travellers fare less well, with the twin ills of mean legroom and headroom compromised by the sloping hatchback. The boot looks larger than it is, with that steeply raked tailgate eating up space. The tight rear cabin and luggage space are consequences of the exterior design, but the cheap-feeling interior trim has no excuse at this price, especially when the Volkswagen Group is pretty much peerless at making sure everything you touch inside a Golf, Skoda, Octavia and Seat Leon, never mind Audi A3, feels of super high quality.

The test car had VW's proven 1.6-litre turbo diesel, which happened to be the same engine as fitted to the Seat Leon I swapped it for. But where it was smooth and eager in the Seat, it felt unrefined and truculent in the Beetle. Worst of all, every time I started the engine the unmistakable scent of diesel exhaust fumes could be smelt inside the car.

Roadtesting offers unfortunately few surprises, though sometimes a car comes along that is more than the sum of its parts, or which worms its way into your affections despite initial expectations - the Dacia Sandero, Kia Proceed GT and Renault Clio are among the more recent positive examples to spring to mind.

Rarer still are cars that really disappoint. Of the new cars I've driven this year, the Mercedes-Benz A-Class remains the chief dud of 2013 but the Beetle is a dishonourable second.

There is a delicious contradiction between the most rational company in cardom, and currently the most successful, building a car whose purchase can be justified only for irrational reasons. Like the Beetle, people also buy Minis and Fiat 500s simply because they like the look of them, or they have persuaded themselves they must have one. Yet the Mini and Fiat have charm in the driving experience, where the Beetle has all the personality of a wardrobe.

It's all the more disappointing because Volkswagen builds some brilliant cars. Your money would be better spent on any of them instead of a Beetle.