The Beetle should stay dead | Thank Frankel it's Friday

And all I can say about the permanent demise of the Beetle is ‘good’. I never understood the mystique of the Beetle, why it acquired cult status, let alone why an entire series of Hollywood films were made with one in the lead role. I guess it must be something about the way it looked.

In my life I have had four Beetle experiences, all of them bad. The best was driving an old friend away from a wedding in one decked out as the eponymous Herbie in the aforementioned films. And that’s only because it was an otherwise very happy occasion and the bride and groom were as pleased as can be to depart their nuptials that way. It takes all sorts.

The first was when I was at a sixth form college trying to get some A-levels and my mate Jon turned up with one he’d bought on a whim for £50 when he saw it parked at the side of the road with a for sale sign in its window. I used to borrow it all the time to go here and there, always telling him what a bargain he’d got and what a wonderful car it was. All lies of course: it was appallingly slow, riddled with rust and the most approximate steering of any car I can recall. But it was transport. Sort of.

Not only did the third Beetle encounter not involve driving one, I wasn’t even in it. I was about 21 years old and had spent the weekend skiing with some friends. On the last night, we walked down the mountain into town and got heroically drunk. When the time came to leave everyone else got a lift leaving me facing a long, cold and uncertain trudge back up the hill. The only car I knew going in that direction belonged to a chalet girl I’d met, but it was full to the gunwales with her mates. There was simply no way of squeezing me in. ‘You could always go on the roof’ joked one of her associates, pointing at the rack which usually carried skis. But I was so desperate it felt like the only available option. The roof it was.

Initially, it was quite good fun lying up there, hands outstretched pretending I was flying like Superman but as soon as we got out of town and up the winding road towards the chalet, it became far less pleasant. Not only did it become very difficult to hold on as she flung this thing ever harder into each successive hairpin (they denied it but I have no doubt they were trying to dislodge me), I soon began to feel extremely unwell. We eventually made it to the chalet where she slammed on the brakes causing me to slip off the front of the car and land in an undignified heap in a snowdrift, much to everyone’s intense amusement. Sometimes I wonder how on earth I survived being young.

The final insult and, indeed, the last time I drove a Beetle was probably about 20 years ago. From memory, my chums at Autocar were wondering what to do with the then-brand-new convertible version of the modern, Golf-based Beetle. And someone – I know not who – hit upon the idea of sending me to a village in the Midlands with the same name as somewhere rather more famous in the US, while I wore a tight white T-shirt emblazoned with the words to support the fact. That's how I came to pose for the camera wearing a shirt proclaiming ‘Frankel goes to Hollywood’. The idea was that I’d pretend not to be enjoying myself and scowl at the camera. In the event, no acting was required. I was genuinely and profoundly hacked off, not so much that I had to look like an idiot on camera for it was far from the first time, but because I’d had to drive one of the worst cars I’ve ever sat in over 200 miles there and back to do it. 

So the Beetle is truly, finally dead? Think I’m over it now.