It’s hard for me to wrap my head around, but my kid is now somehow 14 years old. How did this happen? The passage of – what, time? Is that how this works? Is that why he’s taller than me now? My phone keeps showing me pictures of him from years that I have to remind myself aren’t the present, like 2021 or 2018 or whatever, all of which just feel like yesterday and there he is in those pictures, all kid-like and tiny, next to me, a me wearing the same damn clothes I just threw in the hamper yesterday, and then I see that lanky tube of a teenager clomping around my house and realize holy crap, that’s my kid. A kid who will be driving in two years.
As you can imagine, the First Car decision is a big one for me, being such a hopeless gearhead as I am. One’s first car is, I think, a Big Deal in life, and of course I have all sorts of ideas about what makes a good first car. My own first car was a $600 1968 VW Beetle, the color of Wrigley’s gum or maybe a long-unwashed prosthetic leg. I loved that thing. My parents were not particularly interested in buying me a car, and we had none to hand down, so I worked my ass off at my job at the Byte Shop to save up the money, getting the job when I was 15 (which required special paperwork) so I’d be ready to buy the car the nanosecond I turned 16.
I’m happy to buy my kid his first car, and I want it to be one he actually wants. My kid, Otto, used to be very into cars, and I tried to expose him to all sorts of good weird car goodness. Like this:
I think because of the weird shit I exposed him to, Otto ended up with some happily perverse car tastes. For example, for a while, his favorite car was a Denzel. One of these:
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Of course, the odds of me buying him a Denzel are about on par with me buying him a winged sasquatch to travel around on, so that’s a non-starter. And now he’s much less into cars than he was as a younger kid, perhaps because of how hard he and I were into cars for so long. But I know he still likes cars, and has his own car preferences,
When it comes to finding out what he wants for a first car, it’s been interesting. For a while he wanted a PT Cruiser, which I think would be a decent choice for a charmingly weird kid in 2026 to drive, but just the other day, he expressed a new first-car choice: a Volkswagen New Beetle. In green.
I was happy to hear this, because I’ve always liked the New Beetles, even if I know they’re a sort of costume on a Golf and plagued with all the late ’90s/early 2000s VW issues, of which there are, sadly, many. But I still like them. And part of me likes the idea that both dad and kid will have a kind of Beetle as a first car.
Otto’s reasons for wanting one, though, had nothing to do with any of that, and are actually a lot more interesting. He wants one because he says they are “Frutiger Aero.”
Now, I suspect that many of you are by now decanting more brandy into your snifters and thoughtfully sloshing it around as you wonder, aloud, “the fuck is Frutiger Aero?” And that’s a great question. Frutiger Aero is an aesthetic, one that started around 2001 or so and peaked in the mid to late 2000s. It’s the colorful, glossy sort of look that interfaces like the “Aqua” look Mac OS X started with, and the Windows Aero visual theme.
It’s all of those iMac-inspired semi-transparent candy-colored plastic computers and microwaves and bubbles and glossy lozenges and waves of crystal-blue water and tropical fish and all of that glossy crap you remember from the early part of the century. I remember when this look first hit the scene, and I remember being delighted. It was so optimistic and high-tech but also strangely “natural” in a sort of idealized, artificial way. It was a high-tech future that, for a change, wasn’t all gleaming steel and silver and smooth lines and massive metal monoliths. It was actually fun.
I think I even had one of those iMac-like microwaves, in glossy, transparent blue.
Oh, and if you’re curious, the name comes from Adrian Frutiger, who designed fonts that were commonly used with this look.
From the very beginning, the New Beetle was part of this aesthetic movement; in fact, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, talked about the New Beetle in a well-known article about the iMac. Here’s that Newsweek article about Steve Jobs and the introduction of the iMac, which starts with Steve Jobs seeing a New Beetle:
“Look at That!” says Steve Jobs he pulls his Mercedes into a parking space. He’s pointing at a new Volkswagen Beetle, and as soon as he parks, he dashes over, circling the shiny black Bug, taking the measure of a well-publicized update of once great product design. “They got it right,” he concludes.
Steve Jobs is about as good a spokesperson for Frutiger Aero as you can get, really. The New Beetle was absolutely as much a product of its time as the original was a product of 1930s advanced automotive design. And it’s even weirder that the new one is an update of that 1930s one, but if we keep going down that road our brains will start to hurt.
Anyway, look how close, aesthetically and conceptually, the advertising was for the New Beetle and the iMac:
So, if Otto is into Frutiger Aero, it absolutely makes sense he’d want a New Beetle. And why he’s into Frutiger Aero is interesting, because while to me, that period just feels kind of dated, to him it’s the exciting time just before he was actually born and into his youth. When I was growing up, this period would have been late ’60s and early ’70s design, and I was a sucker for that, too.
To this day, I think 1960s-era car design is my favorite, and I have a fondness for things like avocado-colored appliances and conversation pits and 1970s computers and all other sorts of bullshit that my parents likely couldn’t wait to be rid of. Otto is just doing the same thing, just with a different set of garish colors and absurd design cues.
I’m happy to indulge this. If he has an outdated favorite look, who am I to tell him no? Besides, New Beetles are pretty cheap, and they’re not the same kind of deathtraps that the Beetle I grew up with was; the IIHS gave these a “good” overall rating:
Now, the early 2000s VW reliability stuff is a bigger issue, but I think the basic 1.8-liter ones and even the 1.8 turbos weren’t too bad, and for all the other stuff that fails, well, that’s a chance for him to learn something about cars. Hell, I spent lots of my early driving years rolling under my Beetle with a screwdriver to bridge the solenoid terminals to get it started and all that kind of thing, and I’m pretty sure it either built whatever “character” is or at least got me used to things going wrong, which is a valuable life skill, right?
Whatever. It’s the Frutigerest, Aeroist of cars, and if that’s what he’s into, then, well, that’s a dream I think we could make happen. I have two years to find a good one!
As another member of the crappy-VW-for-a-first-car club (’79 Scirocco), I wholeheartedly endorse this choice.
I remember just thinking “what the f**k is this all about?” with that whole design aesthetic at the time, and I still don’t understand it.
It’s taken from the Bauhaus Movement, and architecture and design trend from Germany in the 1920s. In the immortal words of Google AI, “The Bauhaus movement is known for its geometric, abstract style and its emphasis on function over sentiment.” The profile of the New Beetle can be drawn with three simple curves: two fenders with a raised roof in between. Proportions are what’s important, not applied details like ’50s chrome trim or today’s swoops and slashes. The sentiment is supplied by resemblances to the old Beetle.
I really don’t see much resemblance between the Frutiger Aero aesthetic and Bauhaus, but I suppose AI does always know what it’s talking about
AI provided the definition; I called the New Beetle a Bauhaus creation. So did VW. From their media site, “They took the original Beetle down to its most geometric elements—the three arches— and were inspired by industrial design to mix Bauhaus flavors with warm character design, making the New Beetle stylish and approachable.”
I was talking about Frutiger Aero in general, Jason connected it to the New Beetle. Keep in mind that Frutiger Aero is a term retroactively applied to a collection of similar design trends popular around the turn of the century. Tere was no accepted term for it when it was current, we all sort of recognized what was going on, but didn’t know what to call it and it wasn’t really thought of as it’s own distinct idea yet. Designers and critics would have naturally made comparisons to established and recognized prior movements as a frame of reference and its also possible for a work to be influenced by more than one simultaneously
Nice Pick, Otto! My personal minority report states that VW absolutely nailed the New Beetle on the first try. Still it makes me happy just to see one on the road. A lot of good thinks peaked around the millennium, then faded to gray. We pretended to worry about Y2K, but fascism and WWlll seemed like distant historical concepts. Now, it’s no wonder that black is the universal color. The New Beetle gave us bright colors that hadn’t been seen since the 1950s-60s, that previous time of social optimism and self-confidence. No wonder your boy wants a piece of that!
Though air-cooled, rear-engine diehards denounced it, the New Beetle preserved the best, most distinctive feature of the old one. The interior was all curves, with arched roof and drooping windshield. It encloses the driver in a cozy egg shape, but it also provides splendid outward visibility. The rounded shapes seem to pull the driver and passenger together – though not so close as the original’s claustrophobic cabin. It made every drive a small adventure that couldn’t be duplicated in any other car. The simplistic dash layout, without a center screen, is a charming anachronism that should help avoid distracted driving. Overall, a great choice!
Thank you. That’s a lovely little essay.
As a childless cat dude about Jason’s age I have to wonder if design-aesthetic eras are something the kids talk about casually now that that sort of info is widely available thanks to the internet, or is it a question of both Otto’s parents being graphic designers?
Gen Z here, not related to graphic designers:
Yes, aesthetics are something frequently discussed and obsessed over by the youths of today. You can find countless video essays of various aesthetics on youtube, and in an era when everyone is absorbed with projecting a social media persona and finding your identity, deciding what aesthetics you like and which resonate with you are a huge deal to us.
There is also a large number of youths these days who feel that the modern world is disappointing and modern design boring, so we obsess over other generations’ nostalgia and adopt it as our own. Hence, many Zillennials being obsessed with stuff from the 90s despite none of us being old enough to actually remember the 90s (at best, we experienced 90s stuff secondhand). But many different eras and their associated aesthetics are included in this phenomenon.
But Frutiger Aero stands out as a particularly popular one, because most of us actually did experience it. It represents to us a time of technological optimism and colorful whimsical friendly bubbly design, before everything turned all minimalist and gray and people generally became more disillusioned with technology.
“There is also a large number of youths these days who feel that the modern world is disappointing and modern design boring, so we obsess over other generations’ nostalgia and adopt it as our own.”
I suspect youths growing up in the Victorian age may have also looked back with nostalgia at a time when parts of the world were still unknown and at the simplicity of life without steam powered vehicles and pneumatic lifts and to step out of the house one simply donned a powdered whig and were off with themselves.
J.R.R. Tolkien, at the very least, certainly felt that way. Wrote all kinds of rants about how industrialization killed the excitement of other countries being far away mysterious destinations and travel taking some effort, as well as largely killing the peaceful rural lifestyle he grew up with. He even sold his car after a while and commuted via bicycle on principle, because he hated the way road construction necessitated tearing down a lot of old buildings and infrastructure, and felt cars only made the country smaller and more rushed.
Hence, the simple Hobbits being portrayed as the ones who got it right, and the villains being industrial powers who had no respect for nature or different civilizations and cut down forests to power their war machines.
My 14yo wore JNCO’s to school today.
I can’t wait until Otto writes his first article for Autopian.
Go Otto! This is good chance to combine personal finance with the new-car journey. I did that with my daughter, offering to match whatever she could save up when she picked out whatever it was she wanted to buy. I’m kind of glad she has almost as much patience as me when it comes to buying a car, because she came out of the gates swinging. Found a summer job paying $15/hr. and had the $1750 required to buy the $3500 ’87 Corvette she found on Facebook in no time.
She bought it a full year before getting her license. Now she’s almost 17, and we just put it away in the garage for the winter. I think she’s put almost 5,000 miles on it commuting to school and her job(s). It’s been great for learning to wrench – we spent last summer doing a few things to it and then took it on a 6 hour road trip to Road America for the IMSA race weekend. She was definitely the youngest owner on the track that day. Getting to take it out on the track and hit 90 on the back stretch was about as good as things get for a 16-year old car-nut (and her dad).
I had originally offered to give her my Chevy-powered ’82 Jaguar XJ6 with the caveat that she had to keep it in the same condition as she got it, and learn to service it herself. For awhile, she liked the idea, but then decided an air-cooled Beetle would be more her style. We started looking for one, and were surprised at what they were going for. Then, as luck would have it, my cousin lost storage on his ’71 Beetle and wondered if we could store it and get it back on the road. My daughter offered to help and got to see first-hand what life with one of those would really be like.
Around that time she got into Miatas. Of course things were now getting more serious – she had a bank account, a job, and was making some decent money over the summer as a host at a nice local restaurant. Turns out Miatas are priced a bit like vintage Beetles these days in that a decent driver example of either was proving to be just out of reach.
Enter the dawn of the Corvette era. At some point she discovered C3 through C8 Corvettes and those became her new favorite thing, hence the purchase of her very own C4. She even asked if we could go on a factory tour. I happily obliged and steered our Christmas trip to the in-laws on a detour to Bowling Green, Kentucky last year.
The whole journey began with her first drive, a trip around an out-of-the-way parking lot at 12 years old, sitting on a pillow since the seat was too rusted to move forward, piloting my 3-on-the-tree equipped ’66 Chevy Biscayne. Now her Corvette is awaiting a new steering rack (Christmas present) and after that’s completed she gets to learn basic auto-refinishing as the blue paint, even though it looks pretty good buffed out, is still quite tired.
Have fun and make the most out of your first-car-buying journey with Otto! And kudos for letting him go after exactly what he wants. I didn’t really care much for my early cars as I bought, fixed, and drove a few vehicles that other people told me would be “good”. It didn’t dampen my enthusiasm any, but I wasn’t really happy until I was suffering through the ownership of my first Cadillac, a ’68 Coupe deVille that provided many “learning experiences” as far as cars go. So never mind the naysayers – Otto may not be completely happy until he’s dealing with all of the gremlins hiding out in the wiring and engine compartment of a green, early new-Beetle!
And, speaking of green Beetles, my cousin never did find the time to fix up his ’71. He sold it to us at a good price to keep it in the family! That worked out great for my daughter who is now saving up for a Miata in hopes of having her own personal trifecta of favorite cars before graduating high school.
That’s a great story. Warms my heart to hear there are still plenty of kids these days interested in cars 🙂 Helps reassure me I’m not alone lol.
Thanks! Based on what I’ve seen from her and her classmates, a couple things come to mind. One: car culture is still very much alive and well. Two: the kids are going to be all right.
I bought my soon to be driving daughter a ‘12 6MT Turbo Beetle. My requirement was that she learn to drive a manual and this checked all the boxes. I’ve always been scared of newer VW reliability but decided to take a chance on this low mileage one. I have to say it’s way more fun to drive than I expected. The turbo manual is a GTI wearing a dress.
Oooooh, see if you can find him a TDI! Even better if you can find him a TDI with a manual, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one…
I had a TDI NB with a manual. They weren’t all that rare. But diesel, especially TDI, was a disappointment. They were even more prone to carbon buildup than VW’s dodgy gas engines. As I learned more about my region’s ozone problem, I could no longer condone diesel NOx emissions.
“and plagued with all the late ’90s/early 2000s VW issues, of which there are, sadly, many.”
And how!
“this period would have been late ’60s and early ’70s design, and I was a sucker for that, too.”
That is just a straight up fact The pinnacle of automotive style! Even Adrian agrees!
Seriously charming write up. Please do yourself and Otto a Big favor and avoid New Beetle! I only picked up my 2002 Turbo S because I was working part time in an independent shop, had worked on it before(never fun,terrible access), we told the owner it would likely take $2000 to get through inspection, and he told us to scrap it, so I gave him $350 (scrap value at time) and fixed it up. New tires and brakes all around(nothing Abby Normal there) New valve cover gasket, coils,and oxygen sensors, and it was inspectable. Latter, I had to replace secondary air pump, alternator(terrible access), struts and shocks, master&slave cylinders(internal on turbo S, so drop trans,new clutch and throw-out bearing) the root cause of believed to be leak in plastic tube to rubber elbow, little “top hat” gasket. Both half-shafts. Then it was mechanically sound, and exterior was acceptable. All that was “soft touch” surface, is now gummy slime.(ask Mercedes) The headlight wiring shed its coating, I don’t want to go on, but it did, suffice to say, when I finally got it sorted, I got T-boned totaled(side air bag deployed, just slightly bruised up, decent protection) Insurance paid fair value, and forced me to shop at about the worst possible time. I had that from 167k miles to 200k so I did get use from it, but it permanently put me off of any late 90s to early naughts VAG product!
Years ago, I helped a friend work on his stepdaughter’s VW Rabbit. It was a bit miserable to work on and needed a lot. He referred to the car as “Hitler’s revenge”.
No
Am I not the only one who notices the “lorem ipsum” placeholder? Lol.
I saw that, too. I’m glad I checked here before commenting.
Yes
Jason, you should convince Otto to go for a Yellow so he can use the YOLKSWGN plate our parents had on theirs… of course, if he wants to keep the Green, it’ll still work because it’ll resemble those hard-boiled eggs I loved when we went to Tex & Shirley’s all those years ago!
Green eggs and Ham (bumpers)
And here I thought “Frutiger Aero” was the new “Skibidi Ohio” or something.
At first I thought he was talking about a shampoo.
Yeah, that’s what DT uses while he eats shower spaghetti…
Jason, do you still have your old Beetle sitting in the driveway? I’d say give Otto that or the Changli in the time-honored tradition of kids getting whatever car their parents will let them get. I wanted a 1968 Chevy Belair or a 1985 Ford Mustang when I was 16 (and would have paid for either with my own money) but my dad say no – you get to keep driving the 1990 Dodge Spirit he picked up cheap from work for my brother and I to share.
Perhaps DT’s experience with Toyota products & electrified vehicles* might help make for some convincing on say, a pistachio green XV40 Camry Hybrid with the glowing blue center stack.
Ok so, once upon a time a smidge over a decade ago on The Old Site, I remember reading the Fiat 500 “Will It Baby” piece confirming it would not only baby, but it would toddler with Otto in the back. This helped to convince me to keep feeding my Fiat addiction, despite the impending arrival of my own child. Now that kid is 8 and Otto is moving towards driving and dear god do I feel old.
Saaaame. Every time Otto comes up I remember “Will It Baby?” and I can’t make time make sense.
Me too
I mean… you could find cleaner ones in Europe (avoid Germany due to rust and bad maintenance) and get the cheapest import to your place.
You could even get him a very reliable 1.9 tdi.
https://www.leboncoin.fr/ad/voitures/2866905047
https://www.leboncoin.fr/ad/voitures/2827876793
My 14-year old goddaughter is in the same boat, though she’ll happily accept the second-gen New Beetle in place of the original three arc design.
I’m young enough to know about frutiger aero from memes, but to me it does just look and cheap, reminiscent of a Gulf Shores, AL souvenir shop. His few extra years of youth make a huge difference.
The mini Cooper is along similar style too, also Honda Element, Nissan Cube, and Scion had special editions every year with cool colors so if that’s his jam there’s options.
I actually saw a Cube this weekend on the road; made me so happy, though the driver’s inattention to the task at hand (weaving in the lane, following too close) was troubling. Esp. when I came across it again soon thereafter at a light, after it had just rear-ended a giant F-150. The broken front end made me sad; that car deserved better.
Aw that sucks, they’re from when Nissan was still adventurous, the back window is a giant C! And it opens like a door not a hatch, a true 5-door!
Yeah, for all the weird JDM bubble cars we long for and funky concept cars we wish were produced, the Nissan Cube is all of that raw essence distilled into something we actually got in the US… and few people seem to care. They’re cool! One of these days they’ll be collectors items, mark my words.
You guys are making me consider a Leaf swapped Cube as a someday project, not sure if that’s healthy or not. 🙂
The original Audi TT and Toyota WiLL models might fit, too
Also, the Ford 021C, but that was just a concept
I had an orange iMac. Loved it though remember being annoyed at the time that it didn’t have a disk drive (so much so that I bought one, in matching orange).
Interestingly, by then Apple had gotten out of the peripheral business, producing only the computers, so drives, printers, etc. were all from other manufacturers, but colored to match your Mac.
Nice little bit of generational synchronicity there. You do realize that two years is an eternity to the young? Hopefully he’ll still be into Beetles then, but I wouldn’t go and buy one between now and license day and hide it in your camper or something to surprise him. He may have moved on, plus they always find the hidden gifts early and then have to pretend to be surprised, but they’re not fooling anyone.
I would like to helpfully inform you that the New Beetle and iMac G3 are not in fact Frutiger Aero. Frutiger Aero was from 2004 to 2011. What your kid wants is called Millenialism or Y2K Aesthetic. Y2K Aesthetic was all about smooth organic shapes, clear plastic, and interacting via unusual means and through non-skeumorphic interfaces.
If the little buddy does actually want Frutiger Aero then the Suzuki SX4 is actually completely in-line with that design ethos. Bright colours, smooth metallic interfaces with defined hard edges and a separation between the display, interface, and hardware, and interacting through skeumorphic interfaces.
I think that’s a retrospective distinction, and trends of course bleed together in time.
I lived through that period and learned most of my design cues from it. There was absolutely a shift after 2003, and by 2006 it was a huge change. The optimism just kind of deflated and we went from weird wacky shit to utilitarian and functional design. Compare a Dell Dimension 8100 to a Dell Inspiron 530 and notice the huge difference. Compare Windows XP to Windows Vista. Compare the Chrysler 300M and the Chrysler 300C. And those were all just five years apart.
We came into the new millennium so optimistic, and boy was the future there waiting for us.
Is the SX4 really the most Frutiger Aero car? It comes off as a bit bland and understyled on the inside, especially compared to its predecessor the Aerio. While it might not adhere to the principles 100%, I think the 8th gen Civic has much more of a claim to Frutiger Aero-ness with its avant-garde interior and bubbly design. The Euro-market one is even more Aero with its clear plastic frontal treatment.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Honda_Civic_%28VIII%29_%E2%80%93_Frontansicht%2C_13._Juni_2011%2C_Wuppertal.jpg
That’s also an excellent example, especially the Japanese market version. Another good one would be basically all of Mazda’s stuff from the era of 2002 to 2010, especially the Mazda 2. Some Nissans from the time also qualify, like the March/Micra and the Tiida/Versa hatch. The two cars I always think about when I connect interface and consumer electronics design to cars for the Frutiger Aero era are the SX4 and the Tiida, especially when they’re in that school’s patron colours of pure blue and leaf green.
I too had an old Beetle (1970) as a first car and had the usual love/not-so-much-love affair with it. Bought a used new Beetle and it was crap. I think all of us here at the Autopian and the former lighting site feel like Otto’s one of our friend’s kids, so as much as he’s into the Beetle maybe steer him somewhere else.
You know, like most of us had when we were 16. A hand-me-down grandma car or some cheap thing off a sketchy car lot. Grand Marquis, LTD, Fairlaine, lot of…you know what? Let the kid have a Beetle. Even with my crap luck it’s better than grandma’s old 4 door Grand Marquis.
That orange microwave by SHARP is the same microwave that was in the house that I showed yesterday – except the one I saw was purple.
Now I know what that style is called.
And yeah – More shag rugs, avocado appliances, freestanding conical steel fireplaces and Fondue please.
Cheese fondue*, yes please. (But not anywhere near the shag rugs, please. Also, hard no on shag rugs.)
*Other types? Not worth it.
It must be saying something as to how unreliable (or at least difficult to work on) those New Beetles are because even in California and Arizona, the survivorship rate seems horrifically low. They used to be everywhere in the 2010s, but I haven’t seen a running New Beetle (no, not the newer Beetle) in at least a few months. I appreciate and admire the Frutiger Aero-ness of them, but driving and maintaining one feels like it would dim the appeal. That said, my first car was a P1 platform Volvo which was plenty able to generate mysterious and unfixable problems all on its own.
For me, they’re right up there with Mazda RX-8s for the “they were everywhere and now nowhere” crown. I did see both a New Beetle and a newer Beetle this weekend in the wild though.
I just went on a bike ride and saw three, so maybe they’re not as rare as I thought. That said, they were all the post-facelift models with the (occasionally) more reliable 2.5, and all seemed parked up as a secondary car.
I live in SoCal, and I had to fly to TN to find a nice, low-mileage, non-roached RX-8. (Granted it was also a 40AE, which is very uncommon, but still.)
It was my second RX-8, and I got 100k miles out of the first one (a 2004, no less) still running fine on the original engine, but I’ve had a couple RX-7s and knew what I was getting into.
I still wish Mazda would have just put a separate oil metering tank on it and have it refuse to stop when it’s empty, like a diesel with DEF. Intentionally burning sump oil is just such a bad idea.
My daughter, who should be eligible for her license in two years or so, has announced that she would like either a New Beetle or a Miata for her first car. I think her first car is going to end up being her grandmother’s Jeep Renegade, but I respect her ability to dream.
Still plenty of them here in God’s Waiting Room, FL.