In 1994 Volkswagen unveiled the Concept One, a modern nostalgia version of the classic Beetle. Just four years later, the New Beetle, as it was coined, went on sale for the masses. With a front engine configuration for safety, and and styling cues that would launch the retro-futuristic design craze, the New Beetle could finally escape the dredges of its hippie stoner past and go on to be what it had wanted since the very start – the people’s car.
The New Beetle achieved fantastic success, and, in recreation of the olden days, could be seen on every street corner and at every traffic light. Volkswagen is well versed in the effects of wiping the cobwebs off yesterday’s Disney movies and selling them remastered for DVD. They have knowledge, and a stronghold in the marketplace that includes their ownership of Porsche and Audi. With all that in mind, it’s about damn time they put down the Bug spray and gave us a New Bus, instead.
Since 2001 Volkswagen has been baiting the public with a stylish, contemporary Concept Volkswagen Bus, the Bulli, that speaks to the futuristic hippie in everyone, from the baby boomers to the millennials.
“There’s a lot of baby boomers like myself that are totally in love with these things and would love to have a new version,” says Bill Arute, president of the Volkswagen Bus Club of Connecticut. “That was the success of the New Beetle. Older generation Volkswagen people still have the memories of all the good times in their cars and we’re just trying to still recapture that.”
The Bulli remains true to the yesteryear design fondly remembered by Arute and baby boomers like him. This bus has retained the classic loaf-of-bread body shape and honors its ancestors through the dinner-plate-sized Volkswagen emblem, jutting proudly from its face like the nose of a bulldog after centuries of overbreeding.
Like the bulldog, however, the VW Bus is cute because it is ugly, cool because it is uncool. It fills many niches in the market. Folks can easily imagine a family camper tent top popped for the weekend or smoke pouring from the seams of closed doors and gaudy purple lettering across body panels that read VANpira or Vincent Van-Go.
One does not need to have owned a VW Bus, or even been alive during their heyday, to know that they mean fun, friends, and long weekends. Competing against only the classic Woody for each Car of the Century, the VW Bus stands as so much more than an ugly body and a lackluster air cooling system.
VW has just cause to be hesitant. The last original VW Bus factory closed recently in South America because of safety regulation violation. And, the Bus has a legacy of too little power and too many safety concerns. With a rear-mounted engine and lesser quality materials, the softest of front end love taps could cause the whole car to crumple like an accordion, with the drivers legs at the very nucleus of the implosion.
But despite capitalizing on the past, VW is no longer living in it. In the New Beetle the boys in Berlin switched the infamous rear mounted engine to the front of the car, just as they have the ability to do with a new Bus. For all today’s modifications, VW’s 12-year-tease has the Bus stuck in the 1970s.
And Volkswagen should be capitalizing on those glory years. Much of the success of the New Beetle, came from nostalgia buyers, with money in their pockets and memories of the good old days. That success began nearly twenty years ago. If Volkswagen doesn’t hurry up, they’re going to miss the bus of baby boomers, on which the New Beetle was able to capitalize.
“The whole VW Van popularity was really the baby boomer generation, and one of the things I wonder is the baby boomer generation too old now,” says Larry Edsall, author of Concept Cars. “If they came out with the concept now, put it out on the road, is it too small, is too tight, is it too hard to get in and out of, for an aging baby boomer population.”
Volkswagen is wasting its time. Every year the marketplace
saturates with mid-sized sedans, concentrating on better gas mileage or extra safety precautions. Every year Volkswagen adds to it with its own line up of compact cars, instead of focusing on the newer, and more interesting.
They pull the Bulli out for every international auto show, dust off the side mirrors and wave it around like it’s a new toy. While they pander to an audience desperate for nostalgia, there remains a gap in the consumer bracket that waits, unfulfilled.
The Bulli would not compete with the SUV market. It would not try to run circles around the Dodge Caravan or the Honda Odyssey. Instead, the Bulli would do what Volkswagens do best: Work for the people at a price the people can afford, and in a way that gives the people reason to be excited about their cars again.
Image top center by Michael Gil via Creative Commons.
Image center left by Unsplash via Creative Commons.
Image bottom right by Mark van Seeters via Creative Commons.