Exactly mate. The current retro styling of the car doesn't exactly allow for space efficient packaging at all. The current car was just too retro, it is loosing touch with what the current customer demand of a small compact car.

Unless you are Porsche... and you keep revisiting every few years... not that I mind it.

I have never really understood the point of the 'New Beetle' beyond it being an utterly contrived cult-object dreamed up by marketing execs.

The VW Golf is the real successor to the original Beetle -- the new Beetle is gimmicky and disingenuous.

However, BMW have done a fantastic job with Mini. It is not just a pastiche of the original car ...it has its own character and identity.

Obviously, you can tell by my name that I love the original Beetle. So when I was selling VWs (1998-2001), and was given a New Beetle for a demo, I was thrilled. Until I started to live with the car and found it uncomfortable and basically a two seater. To me, it was no where near as practical as the first one.

I once slammed the hatch of a New Beetle and nearly gave someone sitting in the back seat a concussion! Talk about bad design. It seemed to me that they kept the Beetle shape at all costs, not actually thinking about making it a usable car.

I think because the Germans hated the New Beetle from the start, they got it to market and then left it there, untouched, to die a slow death. So I don't think radically changing the car is a bad thing, they should just change the name too. If they lose the Beetle shape-it's no longer a Beetle.

Totally agree with you here!

And by the way, welcome to the forums!

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Volkswagen’s new Beetle has been on the market now for just on ten years and has enjoyed relatively strong sales despite the lack of significant changes during its life. More than one million new Beetles have been built at VW’s Puebla plant in Mexico and it looks like developers have even more ambitious plans for the next-gen model, which is due to arrive in 2010.

Speaking with Automotive News, VW boss Martin Winterkorn confirmed that a successor was currently being developed and that it would likely be manufactured once again in Mexico, although he didn’t rule out the possibility of it being built elsewhere. Winterkorn was actually in Puebla to celebrate production of the plant’s seventh million vehicle. He also used the opportunity to announce that $1 billion would be invested in the site over the next three years.
Not much is known about the next Beetle except that it will share a platform with the Mark VI Golf and will be slightly larger than the current car. Final styling will be handled by a Californian team but engineering work will be completed in Germany. Once again both coupe and roadster variants will be on offer, although there are rumors of new hatch and SUV versions making production as well.
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Beetlemania is coming: VW plans a "new" New Beetle -- and a baby Bug

It's being developed on the sixth-generation Golf platform and may appear as a 2011 model. And Volkswagen's strategy for the iconic retromobile may extend even to adapting the Beetle's distinctive style to a North American version of the Up! minicar.

The new New Beetle will come off that platform, in the 2010, or more likely, the 2011 calendar year and will include a hybrid version. VW would be smart, in fact, to make the MkII New Beetle hybrid-only, as its distinctive style lends it the same kind of instant recognition as the Toyota Prius. VW of America hasn't officially confirmed the next New Beetle, saying only that it's under study. But what does it need to study? Even with sales sliding to the low 30,000s as the current model has aged, it's selling at twice the rate of Golf/GTI sales in the U.S.

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