Turbo hair drier

VW has given its Beetle soft-top a potent turbo engine. But should it have done?

JUST when we thought Volkswagen’s Beetle Cabriolet had settled into its own little niche in the market, along has come a new one. Well in fact the change is a new engine, and no ordinary motor in that the soft-top Bug can now be had with 1.8-litre turbocharged power.

Up to now propulsion choices for the Beetle Cabriolet have comprised petrol motors in 1.4, 1.6 and 2-litre sizings, and a 1.9 TDi diesel. The top petrol motor was sourced from the old Golf GTi, a nice unit with 114bhp on tap but no rocket ship. That’s all changed with the turbo, an engine that already features in the Bora, Passat and Sharan, and VW has launched this variant with very little fanfare, surprisingly as it instantly becomes the most potent model in the Beetle Cabriolet line-up.

The 1.8T puts 149 horses under one’s right foot, enabling this Beetle to hit 62mph from rest in 9.3 seconds, compared to the 11.7 of the 2-litre. But what’s most impressive is the way the motor pulls. It boasts a very flat torque curve allowing the peak grunt of 162lbft to be delivered from 1750rpm right up to 4600rpm, which is rather useful for overtaking slower traffic. And it does this very smoothly – for a turbo unit there is a surprising lack of lag when you floor the throttle from slow speeds, but with the cabriolet’s top down you do clearly hear the whistling of the turbocharger in action which can be quite evocative.

So this Beetle is quick, and it has muscle – and that’s one of my problems with it. You see to me the Beetle Cabriolet is a cute and curvy machine with love-it-or-hate-it retro styling, a car for which the natural environment is cruising in the sunshine with the top down – particularly at the beach. If your prime requirement is speed, even in a roadster, the Beetle does not strike me as the car you’d choose first. At the same launch event I drove VW’s new Polo Dune, supposedly a muscled-up 4x4-like version of the supermini yet with a piddling little 1.4-litre 75bhp engine. Surely the 1.8T would be better fitted here?

My other problems with this new Beetle are those that afflict the car as a whole. Firstly, the suspension is too soft – fine when tooling along the motorway, offering comfortable progress, but with far too much lurch and roll the moment that you try to use the engine’s power through any vaguely twisty road. And vision out of the car remains a serious issue – from the driver’s seat you can’t easily figure out where the metal bits begin and end, and with the roof up there’s an enormous blind spot over your shoulder.

The plus points are there too, however. The Beetle is a Volkswagen, so you expect it to be well screwed together, and it is. The switches are solid with quality operation (I was pleased to note that a weak hood release switch that many journos broke when the car was launched appears to have been strengthened), while the shell as a whole is nice and rigid. With the hood up there’s no nasty wind-noise in the cabin, with it down a pleasing absence of scuttle shake.

The specification is impressive too; as well as the usual diet of ABS brakes, ESP and traction control, six airbags and electrics on windows and mirrors (the latter with heating too), you also get such niceties as leather on the steering wheel and gearknob, rain-sensing wipers and tinted glass. Of course such a specification comes at a cost, list price for the Beetle Cabriolet nudging £19,000. However you can buy in the secure knowledge that you are paying for quality, and quality that will likely hold its value.