Volkswagen hopes new retro-Beetle will take off in Europe

By Jan-Henrik Petermann Jul 27, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Berlin - The New Beetle , introduced in 1997 as the 'son' of the legendary Beetle from Volkswagen, turned out to be nowhere near as popular as the original.

Now Europe's biggest carmaker is hoping the latest incarnation, the Beetle 2, will redress the balance.

The revamped Beetle 2, whose curvaceous lines also hark back to the original shape first drawn in the 1930s, is aimed at retro-minded buyers who value its lineage as successor to the first 'people's car'.

'The New Beetle was a big success in the United States but Europeans did not really take to it', VW-boss Martin Winterkorn admitted in Berlin recently. Production of the car ceased in July 2010.

VW nevertheless does not see the Beetle 2 as a purely niche product. The talk is of a new model at the 'heart of the range'. The car is being offering in a variety of guises, including an uprated 200-horsepower version for performance fans.

According to Winterkorn, this variant will be on offer for 'the time being' and he hinted at more muscular Beetle versions in the future with additional power on tap.

Volkswagen's core range is currently going from strength to strength. In the first six months of this year VW sold more than 2.5 million of its popular Golf, Polo and Passat models, a near 12 per cent increase over the same period the year before.

With a raft of new models and re-runs of some old favourites like the Beetle 2 the company is aiming high. It is not the first time that VW has raided the archives for ideas to turn into new models.

Several years ago the Wolfsburg-based maker came up with a contemporary version of the stylish hatchback Scirocco and the maker has been pondering a revival of its cult 'Bulli' bus, the VW van with windows which became a hippy favourite in North America and Europe. The new version would be a kind of lifestyle people-carrier.

The Beetle 2 was officially unveiled to the world in April and caused a sensation at the Shanghai Car Show. Despite the accolades, Winterkorn and technical director Ulrich Hackenberg did not want to pass up the opportunity to grab the limelight in Berlin with a presentation of their latest baby.

The task this time around is to capture the imagination of European buyers and succeed where the 'son' of Beetle failed. The design brief was to emphasize the masculine lines of the new Beetle 2 and shake off the image of the car as a pretty runabout for housewives.

'I definitely think we have touched a nerve with this', said an upbeat Winterkorn who does not think the makeover will damage the car's feminine fanbase either.

Besides paying tribute to the celebrated past of the marque, Volkswagen has a very realistic set of achievements in mind for the Beetle 2.

The car with the fun-mobile image has morphed into sensible, everyday transport. VW hopes it will boost the capacity of its factories abroad and overcome tariff restrictions in order to generate higher profits.

'This is all about enhancing local value creation', said Winterkorn. Up to 85 per cent of the parts for the Beetle 2 made at a plant at Puebla in Mexico come from local suppliers - a major challenge to a carmaker whose reputation is based heavily on reliability.

VW hopes US customers will fall in love with Beetle 2 and recently opened a new stateside plant in Chattanooga in Tennessee state. The car is also being primed for the world's fastest growing car market in China.

Volkswagen hopes to boost sales in the Chinese market by between eight and 12 per cent. In the run-up to 2015 the company has committed itself to massive plant investment.

'We are assuming that America will be the primary market for the Beetle but China is set to come a good second', said Winterkorn.

And what of Europe? Volkswagen's top manager would not be drawn on whether he plans to outsell the competition. Asked if sales of the Beetle 2 could overtake those of the older BMW-made Mini, Winterkorn replied: 'That could well happen.'