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!
“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?””
I love the way you write, man.
Just realize he’s a teenager, so his car choice will likely change a dozen or more times in the next two years.
The crayon/colored pencil smell, the christmas tree dashboard, the plastics that turned to goo.
I genuinely hope you find a solid example and he gets to cherish all it’s quirkiness, but as someone whose high school parking lot was filled with that era VW 15 years ago, they were already falling apart back then.
If you’re any kind of father, you’ll include the fake eyelashes when you get it. He’ll love that.
In my horrifically biased opinion, a TDI New Beetle Baja Bug would be the perfect unit for him.
Even more so with a Smyth ute conversion.
But Will It Teen?
(I’m sure it will)
I learned to drive manual in a Vortex Blue ’01 1.8T (named “Entie”), and I still wish New England/upstate New York road salt hadn’t stolen that car from me.
Cyber Green’s a good color too. Don’t show him Isotope Green (a 2001 special-edition color like Entie’s) so he doesn’t fall for something harder to find than the standard, available-across-several-years CG.
One of my younger sisters had a new beetle for a while, she also had minimal mechanical sympathy and would let it break itself in new and exciting ways. My father described to me that somehow it had ejected at least 2 spark plugs- which we then had to HELICOIL the threads with about a foot of extensions. No thanks, if going new beetle at least go TDI and watch out for the bad engine years.
My son will also be driving in two years. Thinking of getting him a car in 2025 so he can tool around with it for a year. He wants an A3 hatch or a Golf (obviously many years old).
I respect the choice (and always liked the New Beetle, regardless of it’s front-engined Golf-ness, and it’s Y2K era retro design) but man, that is not an easy car to own. The few people I’ve known to own one were tortured by weird failings and difficult maintenance. If you thought the Tiguan was loaded with head-scratching design choices, the New Beetle will certainly up the ante.
That being said I support the choice. It’s safe enough, and if there’s a time in your life where you can afford to deal with a nonsense VW product, it’s when you’re still living with your parents. Oh, and that green is an excellent choice.
The ex had a 2001 Beetle. It needed a new ECU at least once a year. Thanks to that car, I will never own a modern VW product.
if even considering a VW from that era, go ahead and search for the company that sells replacement window mechanisms for them. The cable & plastic pulley arrangement inevitably borks when the pulleys give up. They weren’t too pricey a decade & 1/2 back, and reasonably easy to install: iirc, 2&1/2 hours the first time. I got it to 45 min by the 3rd I did. I replaced a bunch for people once word got out that I could do it for less than 1/2 what a shop would charge.
He’s definitely going to build character with one of these as his first car
I got those from my local Audi dealer and they cost just a few euros piece and they were the reinfoirced model.
I did, of course, check at the time, as I always prefer OEM if not fatally flawed. If memory serves, OEM cost some 50% more than that online site. And the overall quality was visibly better: I was convinced after installing the first one. Also, I kept the same # until 3ish years ago with no callbacks, so they held up well.
I love his choice, rationale and your supportiveness. I’m stuck wondering how fashion and trends are times specifically to be 10-15 years after you dumped all your old stuff from the attic off at Goodwill? Frutiger Aero electronics, Tyco slot cars, 90’s clothes and shoes, entire vinyl and CD collections and yellow Sony Sports gear. Heck, Radwood became a thing right after I ditched all that stuff. I coulda retired from hocking stuff on Ebay.
Great argumentation from Otto! This is the first time I hear about ‘Frutiger Aero’, but as soon as I saw the multicolored iMacs and read the explanation, I was thinking the concept car from Marc Newson for Ford. Guess what car also comes up if you google ‘frutiger aero car’ 🙂 Such a shame that that one never materialized…
If Otto can stretch his aesthetic boundaries a little further in the past, give him your Pao. Not only will the local deer population feel safer, but they might even pitch in on the cost of fixing it up, and also an Uber pass for you with drivers who know they exist.
Ask uncle David to look around his neck of the woods for one. Paint may be faded, but no rust. Although, we are talking about David “My Blood is now Rust” Tracey. Maybe disregard my advice
Also, I think Gecko Green Metallic is the best looking color on his car.
Get the 1.9L TDI, and you two could name it “The Stink Bug”.
And get 49mpg all day. Great name idea.
…Or do the Smyth Ute Conversion and call it “The Bed Bug”
That would be awesome in red. It would even suck your wallet dry in maintenance costs!
My sister is into New Beetles, and I don’t dare warn her that they’re unreliable. Any enthusiasm she shows for a car is precious to me. Same with Mini Coopers.
I was born just in time to remember Frutiger Aero imagery, specifically I had one of those “how stuff works” type books full of all the most advanced and exciting tech the 2000s had to offer, such as MP3 players and robot dogs and the Bugatti Veyron, all set to a backdrop of optimistic Frutiger Aero. I honestly think it made me more excited about the potential of adulthood, like the world was full of endless possibilities of adventure and innovation and connection with nature.
So yeah, I totally get why most of my generation and to some degree Gen Alpha have an obsession with the Frutiger Aero aesthetic. It’s modern enough to be familiar, but without all the doom and gloom that surrounds so much discussion of modern technology and today’s world. It is very much our reminder of simpler, more hopeful times.
If Otto wasn’t born into the 2000s, I guess his fascination with it is no different than my own fascination with stuff from the 90s – all the cool stuff people just 10 years older than me got to experience and express nostalgia for, which I just barely missed out on. And now I drive a car from the 90s, which feels cool and retro to me yet also strangely familiar, both because of and despite it being well over a decade older than me. This was the kind of car aesthetic I saw everywhere as a young kid, because the most common vehicles in the decade you’re currently in tend to actually be from the previous decade anyway. So it gives me nostalgia for my own past as well as secondhand nostalgia for other people’s past… Weird, but I like it 🙂
I feel the same about the 80s, having been born at the tail end of that decade.
It really is a thing.
“IIHS gave these a “good” overall rating”…in the moderate overlap test, which is certainly a great score for a 1998 design (good thing he does not want a 1997-2003 F-150 or 1994-2001 Ram for his first car, which did horrendously in that test). However, the New Beetle’s age was showing by the mid-2000s when it came time for the side-impact test – it got a big fat “poor” even with side airbags. The 2012-2019 Beetle does much better in that test. Obviously they’re both an order of magnitude safer than a Type 1. Just something to think about.
1. He’s a chip off the old block.
2. Good time to mention we’re glad his dad is still here for him. ❤️
3. New Beetle in that Haribo green can probably be considered brat-adjacent. Yet another advantage.
How about a 1.9TDI version? I think those were pretty good, if not fast.
Efficient. Jus make sure that timing belt is serviced regularly.
I didn’t love the New Beetle when it first came out, but they have grown on me recently, in much the same way the PT Cruiser has. My daughter, to her credit, is already shopping for a car (she’s got several years til she can even get a license), and in a similar vein, she’s enamored with 1st-gen BMW-era Minis. Again, a car I never really cared for, but one that to her represents a time before she was born, when things were cooler and simpler.
If I wind up buying her a Mini she’ll probably swear off cars for the rest of her life so I’m not sure this is a good vehicle choice. But, she’s also fascinated with pop-up headlights,
So maybe I can gently nudge her in the direction of a NA Miata or Ford Probe or something.
I can dig Ottos choice! I think the designs aged decently- its retro without trying too hard.
I know somebody in my household would love a green one as well- preferably a convertible with tan guts.
Torch, what was your dad’s first car?
I ask because your comparison of his and yours regarding safety triggered me to think about the difference between mine and my dads. (FTR, my son is 17 and still has no license, even though he has spent more time at the track than probably most readers here)
I can’t remember what my dad’s first car was. I need to ask my brother if he remembers. But, mine was an ’82 Honda Accord hatchback. I think safety was still not quite on the top 3 list of priorities at that time. But, our parents… those could have been cars from the 30’s and 40’s, which is kind of crazy.
My dad’s first ‘car’ was a moped, so I guess practically any car is safer than that.
Well, my brother said a Singer or a Crosley. I definitely remember him talking about the Crosley fondly, but I can’t remember much about the Singer.
My uncle got back to me, and I will quote directly despite the spelling errors:
Otto needs to learn about the horrors of the tiguan, and remember that the beetle was made by the same awful company.