In the rear, the seatback is almost vertical, and there isn't much space. Installing a child seat back there requires a lot of legroom, since the one-piece kiddie bucket I have (like most other models) has an inclined seatback. The trunk is miniscule, by the way, and its lid requires a good slam to close properly.

And no, I didn't put any flowers in the holder that pops out of the dash.

The mild revisions that the New Beetle underwent in 2006 have done little to renew interest in the car.

Top goes up, top goes down
With the optional power assistance, lowering the ragtop takes about 15 seconds and includes twisting a handle that's located on the headliner and unlocks the frame. Once the top is down, it stacks up pretty high, which hampers rear visibility.

Raising the top back in place is about as easy, except for one thing: you have to pull the top closer to the headliner and twist the handle in the opposite direction to lock things back in place, and that takes a bit of extra strength to do. People with long fingernails might end up breaking one or two. As for top-down driving, wind noise and turbulence are low.

Does it still get the stares?
When the New Beetle was launched way back in 1998, it looked like nothing else on the road (besides the original bug, of course). It was cute as a button and was quite popular during the first few years (a mainly feminine customer base, of course).

Today, it's still cute, but after ten years on the market, it's no longer an attraction. Even after a mild reskin in 2006, it looks like yesterday's news, and that's the major problem when a manufacturer creates a retromobile like this one; you have to redesign it at some point, but it still has to look like the original.

To make things worse, the famous Transformers character Bumblebee is no longer a VW Beetle in the new upcoming movie, but a 70s-vintage Chevy Camaro.

With the top down, the New Beetle's lines are less cluttered.