I didn’t get to test drive the New Beetle Convertible GLS in the summer — which would have been my first choice to drive any convertible vehicle. I did have it for the second seven days of October.
It was perfect time for tooling around with the top down and taking in the area’s fall colors. And, let me say this before I get all technical — wherever we went as a family, or just me, myself alone — total strangers would come up to gaze upon the wonderfulness of the creme colored, slug-bug convertible.
We were at Moby Dick’s fish store on Sashabaw Road and a guy in an old Ford pickup came up and asked us questions. “Does it have that turbo diesel engine?”
It didn’t.
“That’s sharp,” he said, then noticing the two little boys in the backseat added, “I saw one of these after an accident with a Blazer. It was in better shape than the truck.”
A couple traveling by Harley Davidson stopped at a garage sale we were at up on M-15 somewhere (between Davison and Otisville) and made their way to look at the car. A barber in Oxford and one in Goodrich inspected the bug. A middle-aged lady in a SUV, pulling out of Spezia Drive onto Seymour Lake Road beeped her horn at me and stuck her head out of the window to yell, “Nice car!”
The out and out excitement generated by the Volkswagen’s convertible Beetle is amazing. If you want the adoration of complete strangers, buy this car. You won’t be disappointed.
Thus endeth the gushing . . .
The 2003 Convertible GLS suggested retail price is $21,850. The engine we had under the hood (which is in the front, not back as in the good ol’ days of the Herbie the Love Bug era) had the 2.0 liter, 115 horsepower four-cylinder engine. I wouldn’t call it quick. And, while not a speed demon, the bug was able to get up to highway speeds quick enough to merge into traffic comfortably. The mileage specs for this vehicle stated it will get 22 miles per gallon in the city and 29 on the highway.
We didn’t do much highway driving. We took a lot of back roads from here to out into the Thumb. We took winding roads, hilly roads and two-lane farm roads. And, in all respects the car handled great. FYI, it’s a front-wheel drive vehicle with 16-inch tires and I suspect it will fare well during our Michigan winters . . .
. . . Which leads me to a nice feature we had, the butt-warming, front heated seats. N-i-c-e.
One neat feature of the convertible bug which, thankfully, we didn’t use was the roll-over device. The bug is equipped with two Automatic Rollover Supports located in the back seats. If the car rolls, these supports shoot out in a quarter of a second. Those supports with reinforced windshield pillars make the convertible ride that much safer.
The convertible top is classified as “semiautomatic.” Which means you have to manually twist a handle to release or latch the top and then press a button for opening or closing. After the first couple of tries I was able to get it opened or closed rather easily.
The only thing I wasn’t thrilled with was the little plastic tub on the dash — many folks put flowers here. I considered using it as a cigar holder, just to reaffirm my masculinity.
It was a fun ride. If you want to “build your own” bug, go to the website: www.vw.com/newbeetle/