Gadgetory

the old New Beetle wore out its welcome a cutesy piece of retro stick in the Pixar style that wasn't a bad car but was just too much of a wink after a few years but now with the newest Beatle VW has dropped the word new from New Beetle and grown up its lines quite a bit we end up with a more macho cutesy car I'm not sure the world is better for that or not let's find out as we drive the 2013 VW Beetle Cabriolet seventies edition and check the tip now that's what we had a 70s edition I figured we'd find a bag of grass in the glove box on a Hotel California 8-track in the - wrong on both counts instead 70s edition - Volkswagen means this toffee brown color no other choice and these wheels which don't controversies to me at all a nice set of gold BDS RS would do that now inside you noticed beetles got very good materials all around the cabin color-keyed - plate here that's a nod to the past to the metallic - they had in the early days and you also find we've got this synthetic leather that I think only the Germans can get right they call this v-tex the Mercedes folks call theirs mb-tex it's particularly good in the convertible because it's very durable but it's got a nice leather feel we've seen this head unit before the interface is an unmitigated disaster you rotate through choices or you can touch the screen and reading what's on and what's not I can't figure it out however your sources are basically all there am/fm you got your optical disk up here satellite radio for three months then it's your problem aux jacks over here SD card slot no hard drive luckily no itunes tagging with HD radio bluetooth streaming audio as you can see good metatags support at least with my Android phone and while you do have navigation standard on this 70s Edition it's me small screen again the interface makes it a real disaster and what I'd like to use voice command to enter the address to not have to use that the voice only works for the Bluetooth calling and even when you do that the voice command doesn't give you any prompts on the screen for what you could say so you're endlessly saying help or memorizing commands fail fail fail now hits one got in this car before me and he came back all glowing about the fender audio telling me how great it sounds I figure he's back into the peach whiskey cuz I've never heard one of these fender rig sounds really very good at all he was right this one sounds great for some reason it does two things really well first of all it takes crap sources like streaming Bluetooth fills in the gaps well and makes them sound good that's quite a trick secondly it's loud enough and clean enough to overcome road noise with the top down without kind of getting out of shape being screechie harsh or tube AC and that's at the flat tone settings so I was very impressed the only thing I don't like about the sound system is this stupid little thing over here you can do let's see white blue red colored light on those rings around the speakers that's like a page out of the Scion playbook here's my play call pass now the beetle is a Cabrio in top nomenclature that means a soft top that folds kind of untidily on the back of the rear of the car and never submerges and has no cover over it it's not a spider it's not a retractable some would even say it's not a true convertible now if you don't like the untidy look of the top one it's down VW has been good enough to take up most of the trunk with the world's biggest chunky as tonneau cover I can't believe this thing really you put it up here and you snap it in around the top and the back and the sides my guess is you'll use it exactly three times once the day you bring the car home to show it off once the day you go on that first nice summer road trip and once the day you decide you're sick of this thing and throw it in the garage now here in the engine bay there is really nothing in common with the old beetles the engines in the front not the back it's water cool not air-cooled and it makes a nice sound when you step on it instead of standing like a canary farting two and a half liter sidesaddle inline five it's a real mainstay VW motor they put these in Jenna's all day long front-wheel drive as I mentioned the numbers are very normal because the technology is real normal no turbo no direct injections none of that bill fancy stuff 170 horse 177 foot-pounds of torque gets this car to 60 in about eight seconds it weighs about 3,200 pounds not terribly heavy by today's standards and 21 27 mpg is fine you'd like it to hit 30 wouldn't you but it doesn't the first thing I'm struck by on this beetle is that the ride quality is very good I recall the one before not being quite as delightful in that respect and the power from this engine is responsive there's not a ton of it as you can tell from the numbers but it comes on rather quickly in a nice linear fashion because there's not a lot of trickery going on here I like that occasionally the car will get stuck into higher gear as just about all modern cars do and you'll get a moment of flat-footed miss but for the most part in this sport mode it just works and it's a well done sport mode when you're in here it's not too high-strung and yet it does wake the car up some sport modes are just too frantic you can also go to the gate like I showed you you can shift in the Tiptronic mode I didn't find I needed zoom sport mode nailed it now if you want a big gripe about the inside of this car here's where it is if you look back behind me you might see it there is really poor visibility out to the right and the back where you often look to do your lane change it's because you've got high headrest back there that big old Cabrio top is piled up behind you and that is really hard to deal with I'd rather do a lane change in a Guyardo than in this guy unfortunately there's no blind spot tech available in this Beetle nor is there a rear camera so that all conspires to make for kind of a tricky car to maneuver just keep going forward all-in-all a fun little driver on a nice day it's a great car on a crappy day the exceptional thick quality of the roof also makes it a nice car okay let's price our beetle Cabrio 70s Edition real simple story it's 29 for period there are no options at least nothing CNET style that's the head unit that's the audio system everything is what it is it's part of a very tight 70s package you got to like this color by the way because there's no changing it either it's a real nice driving car it's not a sports car per se but it's got good handling and I was surprised how much I liked it to be honest