I guess you can call it the new new Beetle, though VW doesn't.
Gone is the cookie arched roof, giving in to something a little more rakish.
So, too, the taillights seized paying slavish homage to the past.
Inside, this Beetle gets a grownup dash and instrument panel, while shedding the little bud vase, but offering an upper glove box that does say original car.
One thing you notice right away is the top of the dash isn't as absurdly deep as it used to be
since the windshield base is pushed back and atop the dash, three sporty gauges.
Three engine choices as well, most exciting to me is a torquey 2-liter TDI that should deliver 29/40 MPG but there's also word of a Beetle R with a 270 horsepower turbo motor out of the Golf R.
Now, VW needs this new Beetle to deliver more than the 7% or so of its sales it's been doing the last couple years if the company wants to hit audacious goals of being the world's biggest carmaker by 2018.
The new 2012 Beetle arrives in the US September of 2011.
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