Or maybe it stems from something much deeper. In the 1960s, the VW Beetle was considered a "safe" car for a woman to drive. A female driving a sports car would be considered "easy" or looking for the wrong kind of attention. But a Beetle was somehow asexual. Cute, sure, but not a blatant come-on. Perhaps that same sense of safety and virtue from the 1960s still appeals to the women who buy and restore these cars today.
The Squareback Subculture
In the mid '60s through the early '70s, Volkswagen decided it needed a more sophisticated car than the somewhat rudimentary Beetle. Its answer was the VW Squareback and Fastback. Equipped with disc brakes, fuel injection, a more stylish body and a bigger, more powerful aircooled engine, the Squarebacks and Fastbacks were everything the Beetle wasn't. They were also not very successful, and buyers politely passed them up and kept buying Beetles. Oddly enough, these sales failures have become highly collectible with the VW crowd, especially among techno-geeks who want to engineer a really quick car. It seemed like every Squareback lined up at the show had trick wheels, lowered suspensions and a highly tuned engine. It was almost hard to remember what these little cars looked like originally, as almost all of them have become aggressive little sport sedans and wagons. Cool.
Wasser, Wasser Everywhere
When it came time to really replace the legendary yet venerable VW Beetle, Volkswagen did so with a car that was destined to also become a legend. The Volkswagen Rabbit abandoned air-cooling, and its watercooled four-cylinder transverse engine powered the front wheels of the perfectly sized sedan. Volkswagen was quick to recognize the performance potential of its new car, and soon variants like the GTI, the Scirocco sports car and hot versions of the later Golf made the watercooled VWs an enthusiast's dream. They ended up spawning a whole tuning industry in the U.S. and proved an affordable way to go racing and rallying for thousands of amateur racers.
It is therefore a bit surprising that the watercooled cars weren't more strongly represented at the Volksfest meet. Sure, there were examples of each, but compared to the volume of aircooled Beetles and Buses, they were in a distinct minority. What's more, while there is an obvious attempt to restore many Beetles back to originality, many of the watercooled cars have been customized and modified by their owners. The rally and touring car look is really popular among these young men, who seem mostly in their 20s. Many of these owners apparently watched "The Fast and the Furious" a few too many times. Maybe in 10 years the most prized Rabbit will be one that is untouched and original.
Yuppie Time
And then there are the New Beetles. There are a lot of them, and they line up in row after row near the front of the show. Most of these owners look to be young professionals who are at the front end of their careers. There are lots of car seats and baby strollers. Because the New Beetle has become so common, there seems to be an almost desperate attempt among owners to make theirs different from all of the others. At one extreme are lowered suspensions, wide wheels and tires, sport seats and aerokits. At the other extreme are stripes, graphics and wild or sometimes insufferably cute paint jobs. How many cars that look like "Herbie, the Love Bug" does the world really need? In between are a whole group of people who just seem to like the cars they bought and who are happy to have found a group of others who feel the same way. Once again, women, and particularly young women, are very well represented among the owners of New Beetles.