The market, like nature, finds a way. Despite their ancient design, Volkswagen Beetles were famously still made in Mexico until 2003 and incredibly common as Mexico City taxi cabs until 2012. They’re illegal for cab use there now for being too unsafe, but the city’s Cuautepec area is plenty dangerous on its own.

So far, the big automotive news about the latest Replicantsplotation movie, Blade Runner 2049, is that it seems that French cars like Peugeot will make their return to America with some very impressive flying cars. I have some potentially bigger news, though: it appears that in 2049, there’s at least still some old…

I’m sure for our regular readers who spotted my byline here, this isn’t really a difficult question. Yes, under that 1980 Austin Allegro body beats the air-cooled heart of an old Volkswagen Beetle. Actually, it’s the whole chassis, not just the engine, so maybe it’s beats the heart and resides the, um, musculoskeletal…

Engine swaps are interesting: most engine swaps are done for a pretty specific, rational purpose, like gaining reliability or improving performance. Those reasons make sense. But I’d argue that the pinnacle of engine swapping as an art comes when there’s really no rational reasons for it to have happened at all, and…

A couple months ago, hints were dropped that the Transformer known as Bumblebee would return to his original automotive form, a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, for the new standalone Bumblebee movie currently in production. Now, we have what appears to be photographic confirmation of this, and, even better, I have…

What do you get when you fill the trunk of a classic Beetle with a modern Audi 1.8-liter turbocharged engine that’s been tuned up to 389 horsepower? Donuts. You get donuts.

My love for driving began at an early age, and I’d drive anything with wheels—the problem was, it began at an age too early for me to drive legally. But at 14 years old, I had a boyfriend with a manual ‘63 (or some model year near that one) Volkswagen Beetle and a legal driver’s license.

My mom’s first car was a pretty typical one for a 20-year-old growing up in the suburbs of Munich in the 1980s. It was a 1972 Volkswagen 1302 Beetle (essentially a Super Beetle) with a beige paint job, 1300 cc air-cooled flat-four engine, four-speed manual transmission and a heater that never worked.

A year ago, I blew the motor in my 1974 Volkswagen while trying to make it from Sacramento to New York City. I made it as far as Arkansas, where my car has sat ever since. Now, finally, I am flying down to retrieve it and finish the cross-country journey I started.

I’ve written before about the fascinating and sad tale of Josef Ganz, the Jewish engineer who designed much of what would become the Volkswagen Beetle before being erased from history by all those unpleasant Nazis. Now, the lone surviving example of a car that’s the most direct VW Beetle ancestor, the Ganz-designed…

As you may or may not know, I have a thing for early Volkswagens. I’m also aware of how problematic that is, what with all the Nazi history. That may not have been as much of a problem for Jesse James, who may find the Nazi associations a bit more of a plus than most people. Regardless, the car he’s selling on eBay…

There’s few things in this world that are more likely to make me do a delighted spit-take than old, forgotten Volkswagen prototypes and design concepts. This morning someone named Olivier, of the amazing Car Design Archives Facebook group, sent me what’s basically the VW geek’s equivalent of a full shot of deep-fried…

The Volkswagen GTI is widely considered the first (well, there were some before it) really popular modern hot hatch as we know them: an economy car tweaked by the factory to be a sports car, of sorts. Interestingly, VW actually played with the idea of turning a cheap car into a sports car the year before the GTI, with…

Just a little shouting-out to our pals at VWVortex, who helped me achieve a lifelong goal by mentioning me in the same sentence as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

It was a clunk, then loud banging from behind me, and then the engine cut off. Any other time before and I would have been in a flash of panic, checking and forcing a restart and I don’t know what else. This time, man, I just put it in neutral and coasted ahead into the night.

The Volkswagen factory rally team will be entering three Polo WRC cars in the Dayinsure Wales Rally GB, from October 27-30. But there’s also another, slower Volkswagen entry in that race, a 1958 Beetle named Bertie.

Beetles are known for being many things, but fast typically isn’t one of them. This new Beetle, dubbed the “Beetle LSR” for “land speed record” just went out to shatter that perception. It got up to a blistering 205.122 mph during Bonneville Speed Week this year.

Generally, people you meet on Craigslist don’t enjoy the most stellar reputation. Most people treat any in-person transaction with someone from Craigslist with the same caution you’d normally associate with gorilla inseminators. But there’s a woman in Virginia who handed over her beloved Super Beetle to a stranger,…