Like the closed Beetle, the Cabriolet has some unavoidable curiosities of layout, as it keeps something like the old Beetle's exterior proportions in a car which has a front engine rather than one slung out at the back.You don't really notice this from the outside, but once in the driver's seat you can't miss the fact that there's an enormous fore-and-aft length of fascia, to the extent that the windscreen is out of reach for anybody with less than gorilla-like arms sitting normally at the wheel.In some designs, this would create immense problems in providing enough passenger and luggage space, but the Cabriolet is actually quite well packaged - within limits. Rear-seat space is reasonable, especially if there's some give-and-take with the people in front, and even with the hood up there's enough rear headroom for a six-footer.If you want to carry luggage with you, then running with the hood up, while keeping the hood cover and wind deflector cover out of the way in the boot, is where the trouble starts. The actual boot volume is small but just about manageable - and the boot hinge and strut arrangement is very sturdy - but you really have to chuck out all the equipment stuff if you want to take anything like a weekend's luggage with you.So, as is the case with some other cars of this kind, when going to a weekend or holiday destination you'd better run the car closed, and open it up only after you've arrived at your destination and taken your luggage into the little palm-fringed hut by the Mersey shore.As cabriolets go, this one is quite solidly built, although there's one thing which may make that judgement seem rather optimistic. Any open car with frameless windows, and a system which automatically lowers them an inch or so when the doors are being opened or closed, has to be built like a battleship if the glass isn't to rattle when the wheels hit any kind of rough ground. This is not a battleship.Well, you could tell that from the bud vase on the fascia, something which a number of CARkeys characters think wimpish in the extreme, but I consider quite cute.There's clear and simple instrumentation, a better five-speed manual gearchange than in some other cars built by the VW Group, and smooth running on main road journey. The 1.6-litre model is one of the mid-range models in the Cabriolet catalogue, and although it cruises well enough on motorways and handles quite nimbly on country roads, there's no great reserve of power or torque for the hills.Most convertible models these days make great play of the fact that the hood disappears completely once it's folded back. The design and rear body structure of the Volkswagen simply can't offer that, and - as with the original Beetle Cabriolet back in the 1950s - the furled hood goes into a folded position on top of the rear bodywork. There's no point in moaning about it; that's just the way things are.The 1.6-litre has an electro-hydraulic fold-down hood arrangement, and once you've done a bit of fiddling around with the top catches it all works pretty quickly. One snag is that the plastic "press here" control behind the handle you need to turn to unlatch the hood from the windscreen top rail is quite flimsy. At least, when we returned the test car with that part of the hood system in bits (it doesn't affect the actual operation), nobody at VW batted an eyelid. "They all do that," seemed to be the general response. It's quite a good idea, though, that the underside of the front part of the hood is solid rather than fabric. Cuts down on wind-flapping.CARkeys people of the taller persuasion look dubiously at any car where their heads, if the vehicle were to be rolled, would protrude beyond a straight line drawn between the top of the screen and the top part of the rear bodywork. The Beetle Cabriolet has a system which, when it senses a somersault in the offing, pushes the usually hidden roll-over bars into place behind the rear seats.The Cabriolet was a more comfortable long-distance cruiser than I was expecting, with a good multi-ply hood and, in this particular example, the extra-cost leather upholstery which adds a certain something to the interior. And that bud vase.Second opinion: The last car I drove whose windows rattled quite this badly was the Renault Avantime, and you know what happened to that. Still, the Avantime was always going to be a risk, whereas the Beetle Cabriolet is probably one of the safest bets in the motor industry - people who like that sort of thing will buy it simply because it's there. Not much point, then, in criticising it too closely, but for the record the Cabriolet shares several problems with solid-roof Beetles, such as a woolly front suspension set-up which spoils both ride and handling, and that rear seat space which I find less acceptable than is suggested above. Does it matter? I doubt it. My first trip in the test car lasted about a mile, and at the end of it people were shouting "Nice car, mister!" even before I'd switched off the engine. David Finlay. Engine 1596cc, 4 cylinders Power 100bhp Transmission 5-speed manual Fuel/CO2 36.2mpg / 187g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 12.3 seconds Top speed 110mph Price £15,400 Details correct at publication date
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