VW Fans:
a) Do the new VW Beetles have an air-cooled engine? And, is it still located in the back?
b) Why did VW kill the new Beetle? I have yet to hear an explanation about this…
Thanks,
- Jinx
The New Beetle has an air-cooled engine – in the front. In the rear is a hatchback. Good room for rear passengers, but the rear pillars curve inward so the rear passengers have to lean inboard to avoid hitting their heads in bumps.
The New Beetle has not been killed. VW stopped production on the “original” Beetle that was still being built in Mexico (but was not sold in the U.S.).
Here is more discussion from early last month.
Oh! Very confusing! I just heard that production of the Beetle was being stopped…and it was in context to some talk about the New Beetle. Ok, now that makes more sense!
Thanks for the clarification! We just got our 4-yr old into counting Beetle Bugs! They’re not as abundant as they once were, and this news didn’t help matters. Now, I see it won’t affect our game as production of the New Beetle continues…
Thank you, Johnny L.A.!
- Jinx
When I was a kid my dad and I would play a game on our trips up to the Grandparents’ place in Oregon. Whenever we saw a VW Bug, we’d shout “Beep! Beep!” Whoever saw the most in a given distance won. 
The New Beetle has a water cooled engine, just like the Golf that it basically is underneath.
We used to play “slug bug.” Whoever sees a beetle first says “slug bug” and punches the closest person in the arm. My kids do basically the same thing (not taught from me) except they say “punch buggy no punch back.”
:smack: I meant to write liquid-cooled engine! I hate it when I mis-type an answer to a factual question! :smack: :smack:
The new Beetle (BTW Beetle was never the official name of the original) does not share a single component of the old one. As Telemark says its just a Golf chassis (the Golf used to be the Rabbit in America) with the bug body on it.
The Audi TT uses the same planform as well.
VW finally killed off the original Beetle (Type 1301) this week. The absolute last model, which sported an air conditioner and CD player, is being sent to the VW museum. Over 21,000,000 were built and quite a few still survive.
I have heard plans to kill the New Beetle, but nothing definite. They just introduced the convertible this year.
I wish they’d deep six the Cabrio and replace it with a Karmann Ghia-styled convertible. And NOT that hideous show car that made the car show rounds recently.
None of the news reports I watched said anything about WHY they were stopping production. And the previous SDMB had nothing definitive either.
Anybody know for sure?
I believe that there are almost no, or actually no, air-cooled engines left in passenger cars. Apparently it is hard to control emissions properly in air-cooled engines.
Hmmm, but this wasn’t a problem for the 20-or-whatever years Mexico produced beetles after nobody else did?
If it was indeed the problem with emissions, anybody know why suddenly they decided this was important?
In some ways the TT is to the new Beetle as the Karmann Ghia was to the original type 1 sedan.
As for reasons for finally stopping production, this is from The Economist, July 10th 2003:
“But even the Beetle has now succumbed to market forces. In recent years, production at the giant Volkswagen plant in Puebla, just outside Mexico City, has dwindled to a mere 53 a day. Since 1994 and the start of the North American Free-Trade Agreement, Mexican consumers have been taking full advantage of the greater choice in the car market. General Motors and Ford have been offering cars, for about the same price as a vocho, into which one can actually climb and have a civilised conversation over the sound of the engine. Their models also provide air-conditioning without having to take out the windows, and air-cooled engines without removing the back of the car. Even Volkswagen seems slightly perplexed by the longevity of its car, scarcely altered since the first production model of 1937.”
And Beetle was in fact the official name of the car, but not until the late 1950s onward.
Cheers.
