Classic Volkswagens are hot property, and the pull of its ownership cult is stronger than ever. We took six Wolfsburg icons to the beach to get to the core of their appeal and find out how to buy your way into coolness
It just means ‘People’s Car’, and yet Volkswagen signifies so much more. There’s no shortage of rivals with reliable, cheap utilitarianism at their core, but few have managed to unite counter-culture hippies and surfers with City yuppies and boy racers within their embrace. There’s every chance your first car was a battered Golf – the same thing Prince Michael of Kent uses as a runabout.
To investigate this curiously classless appeal, we have gathered six VW icons. There’s the Beetle that began it all, and the Camper that kick-started the ownership cult. The Karmann-Ghia made a glamorous push upmarket, a theme that hit its zenith with the Corrado VR6. And then there’s the Golf GTI, the car that defined the hot hatch. We’ve also included a Lupo GTI, which proved that there was virtue in going back to basics after years of growth.
So which will convert us to the cult of VW, and how do you buy your way in? Time to take the wheel and find out.
Before I’ve even taken in this Beetle’s unmistakeable shape, it’s the sheer orangeness that hits me. It dominates my peripheral vision, and continues as I slide my knees under its steering wheel, because the interior of this basic 1200 is full of body-coloured metal too. You could drive it on a wet November day in Skelmersdale and it’d still remind you of Californian sunsets.
Brilliant Orange says a lot about the root of the Beetle’s appeal and the legacy of VW marketing genius Heinz Nordhoff. By persisting with the same model for decades, VW quickly amortised its production costs and could concentrate on customer service, cutting costs without compromising quality, and expanding things like colour choice and options. ‘We do our thing, you do yours,’ ran VW’s advertising tagline when this car was new, underneath two Beetles – one in black and grey, the other a riot of colour and festooned with accessories.
There’s a precision and tautness to the Beetle’s controls at odds with its laid-back demeanour. The gearchange is slicker and more precise than any rear-engined Porsche would be until the mid-Eighties, and although it isn’t in any way sporty, there’s no slack to this recently rebuilt example’s steering.
It’s slow though. Full tilt is 72mph; the tangerine single-dial dash doesn’t bother with a tacho. You judge the flat-four’s revs through its distinctive aircooled splutter, which doesn’t seem to rise in note but rather in volume as you accelerate. The satisfying precision of the controls has me racing through the gears, then I look down and realise that in fourth, I’m barely over 30mph
