Love For The Bug Bugged

Pollution Of The Image
by Paul Grimsley

I used to always want a VW Bug — I loved them since I saw the Herbie movies back in the seventies. Bugs had character — and amidst the boring raft of cars which, if they didn’t have their brand on them, would be anonymous, they stood out.

I am not sure how well, by themselves, they stood up to the test of time in a mechanical sense, but it got to the point where you’d only really see them as classic cars that had been souped up, and in my mind they occupied an echelon of cool that most cars never approached. I’m not a car person — I generally hate most of what passes for car design these days, and I tend to look back to the muscle cars as the ultimate expression of automobile perfection. Bugs seemed a little more affordable, and from what I understood were pretty economic to run.

When they relaunched the Bug I wasn’t quite sure if I liked it as much. To my mind it doesn’t represent such a smooth transition from old design to new design as the Mini does, but there was, again, something that made it stand out; something that gave it some charm. I had a choice between the two now when it came to buying.

And then there was the emissions scandal, and as the extent of that came to light, it soured everything for me. Even soured the new electric VW Van, that appeals to me on a very visceral level … totally connecting with me on some nerd frequency. One of my friends told me the interior of her VW was all plastic and bits just broke off, and that they were expensive to replace, so she’d never get a VW in her life. To say the shine had worn off was something of an understatement.

If there hadn’t been all the negative press there was I think my friends comments might have gone unheeded, but the thing is, and I could have missed it, but I don’t remember much of a message coming from VW to handle the bad PR they had received.

Firing a few people who are probably being rewarded nicely for taking the bullet doesn’t really cut it. Even the $15B settlement and the buyback or repair of affected vehicles doesn’t really put the shine back on. Winterkorn, the CEO denies any wrongdoing.

It makes the Kombi Van an interesting thing to me, but now it’s something I don’t think I could buy, because I don’t want to support a company with such an unethical outlook. Could this change? Of course — never say never. But for now? Herbie and his ilk are out in the cold.