The Revisionism Really Bugs Him
If memory is right, the Volkswagen Beetle got 650 miles per gallon, had an engine that could be fixed with a hairpin and was sturdy enough to drive through an arctic blizzard.
But memory is not right.
My Beetle was none of that, and yours probably wasn’t either. Unfortunately, the sappy nostalgia corps has taken over, and we are required to put up with a bunch of malarkey about the Beetle because baby boomers used to have them and baby boomers now run everything and imagine that we care.
Next month, Volkswagen is introducing a new Beetle that sort of looks like the old Beetle in the same well-rounded way that we sort of look like our old selves from back then. Although the new Bug will cost about 10 times as much as the original, its reincarnation has set off an avalanche of recollections, reflections and other hooey from the boomer brigade: Oh, it was a delight. So cute. So efficient. So comfy. And it made you catnip to the ladies.
Well, my Beetle was about as comfortable as a casket. I drove it all over the nation and am certain I would be 6 inches taller today if I hadn’t spent those formative years hunkered down like Ichabod Crane, watching the road from between my grasshopper knees.
Sure, the car got good mileage, but at a quarter a gallon, what difference did that make?
And, sure, you could carry several passengers in a Beetle, but only if they were stickmen or could fold up like a Swiss Army knife. Otherwise, the back seat was suitable primarily for transporting a roll of pennies. The radio wasn’t strong enough to reach the back passengers anyway, with its tinny musical notes running out of steam and falling to the front seat floor. And the goofy configuration of the trunk allowed only for the storage of handkerchiefs; it was far too small to accept a suitcase.
I once had a fine belly button that was the talk of the neighborhood. But it melted. It melted because the heater on my Beetle blasted a jet exhaust, dragon’s breath, into my poor midsection. In the summer. Of course, in the winter it never worked at all. Anarchic, the heater took orders from no one.
My Beetle also had a sunroof. Sort of. Mostly, it had a hole which, open or shut, allowed in the whistling air or--when the humidity went up--leaked a Niagara of water.
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Yet the Good Old Days crowd is waxing euphoric about the efficiency of the Beetle and how it was as simple to repair as a lawn mower. Well, then and now, I cannot repair a lawn mower. What I recall is that the car sounded like a lawn mower--and was just about as powerful.
The romantics get all woozy recounting the merry virtues of the Beetle, how it chugged along as a free and sturdy spirit. It was so cheap, they trill. Tales of 150,000-mile Beetles abound. To hear it told, they could march through blizzards and glaciers.
Not mine. Mine couldn’t push through fog unless it was rolling downhill. And once the first blush was worn off the thin tires, it slid around on the ice like Bambi. It couldn’t climb through a snow layer thicker than a $50 bill.
No, the Beetle was not so very grand.
Ah, but the times were. What the boomers and I recall with such rosy satisfaction is the spirit that found us together in the first place. Who cared whether the car was powerful or warm? Who worried about wrinkled pals shoehorned into the back seat? We were bright and sleek and alive with dreams and expectations.
A $16,000 Beetle? Make it 10 times that and it still won’t be enough to pay for the fun of the original vehicle and the original us in our Beetle moment.
