In case you'd forgotten — and it would be difficult to, since Volkswagen has seemed determined to remind us every few months — 2019 was the final year of production for the VW Beetle. As a final send-off, VW put together an animated short film commemorating the nameplate's contributions to pop culture over the past eight (!) decades.
This 90-second tribute, dubbed "The Last Mile," can be forgiven for lacking depth, but it will probably still manage to tug on your enthusiast heartstrings. It features cameos from Ren McCormack, Kevin Bacon, Andy Warhol, and Andy Cohen, and is set to a cover of The Beatles' “Let it Be” performed by the Pro Musica Youth Chorus of Oak Park, Illinois.
"The Beetle is easily one of the most recognizable cars in the history of automobiles," said VW marketing VP Saad Chehab. "Honoring it properly required a medium with just as much versatility and universal appeal as the car itself."
While the film focuses on the original Bug's place in history (and our hearts), fans of the reincarnated generations of VW's iconic coupe can take heart; they're not being left out of the celebration.
"While we chose the classic Beetle as the star of the animation, additional campaign components in Times Square honor the latter two generations of cars and their place and presence in American culture," Chebab said. "We are proud of our past but our eye is on the future – hence our choice of New Year’s Eve to hint at our upcoming long-range EV and the 2020 Atlas Cross Sport.”
"The Last Mile" will be featured alongside other VW memorabilia and hints about the brand's future in Times Square Tuesday night as part of the company's sponsorship of "Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve" on ABC.
Volkswagen's European-spec Passat wagon came up short in the world-renowned "moose test," swinging its long tail out wide in the infamous maneuverability test designed to evaluate a vehicle's ability to spare a hypothetical moose (not to mention the vehicle's occupants) in the event that he wanders into the travel lane.
In this case, the evaluation performed by Km77.com (spotted by Motor1) produced results that might raise a few eyebrows, especially among those who covet the wagon variant of VW's midsize car.
The Passat initially fails the test at 48 mph, with its tail snapping loose as the driver completes the initial lane change. It then swings wide in the opposite direction as the driver attempts to correct for the oversteer.
Over the course of the test, the Passat manages to tag cones on both ends of the maneuver. If this were a real road — especially a narrow two-lane in Europe — those would be curbs or perhaps even soft shoulders.
Km77.com repeated the test multiple times, finally getting the Passat to behave at 45 mph (73 kph), which the outlet described as "quite slow" as evaluation speeds go.
While "moose test" may be the catchy term for it, the evaluation is simply an emergency lane-change maneuver. It is far more likely to be relevant for drivers who may encounter children or reversing cars encroaching on the road than the four-legged beast that inspired its name.
It's notorious for punishing vehicles engineered with a high center of gravity, with American-market crossovers and SUVs often getting called out for their poor performance in one of the most notorious evasive maneuver tests in the world.
Sedan-based station wagons simply aren't supposed to suffer from the same shortcomings. VW's Euro-spec Passat wagon is the rare exception. It's not only a low-slung wagon, but one engineered in Europe — where expectations for vehicle dynamics are ostensibly higher. We don't get the Passat wagon here in the United States. But we do get the sedan.
