Car Review: Volkswagen Beetle
Aug. 7th, 2012 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bjarvisThe nice thing about traveling is that it’s the perfect opportunity to test drive cars you might not have previously considered. Even better, when they suck out loud, you can return them with no shame.
This trip, I had a Volkswagen Beetle. I give it a so-so rating.
On the good side, the seats were comfortable, the engine had great acceleration and the fuel consumption wasn’t horrid. It had a nice feel while driving in both city and highway conditions and handled very well. And who could resist its iconic profile?
On the bad side, it made me constantly and uncomfortably paranoid about my surroundings because nearly all of my lines of sight were blocked in some fashion. The rear view mirror was much too small to show what was happening behind me IMHO, although perhaps a larger one wouldn’t have been utterly defeated anyway by the four headrests. Even when I swiveled in the driver seat to look behind me while reversing, my field of vision was limited on both sides by the rear headrests. The roof struts on each side created enormous blind spots which scared the hell out of me while changing lanes and parallel parking. Even the windshield was less than it could be as my seat sat physically so high in the chassis that I was looking through the top two inches of the windshield rather than a preferred 1/3 vertical down the height of the windshield.
The steering wheel seemed designed to block my view of the dashboard. I could find no position which didn’t obscure some portion of the dash or controls. I had a choice of aggravating my carpal tunnel syndrome or seeing the speedometer and ultimately chose the speedometer for fear of local speed traps and radar cameras.
Trunk storage was OK. The two passenger rear seats were a token effort at best: only the smallest of people could get into & out of those without acrobatics or sit with comfortable foot & leg space.
My ultimately love/hate metric for a rental car is whether or not I'd swap my 2001 Honda Civic for the car I'm test driving. In this match-up, my Civic wins in nearly every category which matters to me. Your mileage may literally vary.
In short, it was a cute & snappy little beastie, but I couldn’t drive one for more than a few days without going insane. Road rage is supposed to come from other people on the road, not inflicted by your own vehicle.
This trip, I had a Volkswagen Beetle. I give it a so-so rating.
On the good side, the seats were comfortable, the engine had great acceleration and the fuel consumption wasn’t horrid. It had a nice feel while driving in both city and highway conditions and handled very well. And who could resist its iconic profile?
On the bad side, it made me constantly and uncomfortably paranoid about my surroundings because nearly all of my lines of sight were blocked in some fashion. The rear view mirror was much too small to show what was happening behind me IMHO, although perhaps a larger one wouldn’t have been utterly defeated anyway by the four headrests. Even when I swiveled in the driver seat to look behind me while reversing, my field of vision was limited on both sides by the rear headrests. The roof struts on each side created enormous blind spots which scared the hell out of me while changing lanes and parallel parking. Even the windshield was less than it could be as my seat sat physically so high in the chassis that I was looking through the top two inches of the windshield rather than a preferred 1/3 vertical down the height of the windshield.
The steering wheel seemed designed to block my view of the dashboard. I could find no position which didn’t obscure some portion of the dash or controls. I had a choice of aggravating my carpal tunnel syndrome or seeing the speedometer and ultimately chose the speedometer for fear of local speed traps and radar cameras.
Trunk storage was OK. The two passenger rear seats were a token effort at best: only the smallest of people could get into & out of those without acrobatics or sit with comfortable foot & leg space.
My ultimately love/hate metric for a rental car is whether or not I'd swap my 2001 Honda Civic for the car I'm test driving. In this match-up, my Civic wins in nearly every category which matters to me. Your mileage may literally vary.
In short, it was a cute & snappy little beastie, but I couldn’t drive one for more than a few days without going insane. Road rage is supposed to come from other people on the road, not inflicted by your own vehicle.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-08 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-08 01:20 am (UTC)But having seen one in the flesh a few times, it's not bad looking but the thing I've also noted, to my dismay is how the sight lines have gotten worse with slit style windows and an unusually high belt line. It's so common now as you see this on so many cars that electronic gadgets are required to assist you in backing up or seeing who's on your sides.
That's one thing I like about my Mazda Protege5, I can SEE out of it in all directions. :-)