June 27: Dune!

Dune? What the heck is a Dune? Well, it's easy to see from the pic, that it is a VW Beetle, specifically the Dune Concept, that was shown at the 2014 Detroit Auto Show. Just a concept said VW. Now according to the latest AutoWeek, VW has it planned for production, although the official word is not yet on the street. So what is a Dune? How about an all wheel drive Beetle with a turbo 2 litre under the hood (the front one).

A neat look that suits the body style of the latest chopped roof Beetle  - tough and kind of like a hot rod, less of a girls' car. But what is the Dune?

It is a Beetle version of the "we don't get it here" Cross Polo. I've seen many of these in Europe and they are rather neat little suv type vehicles. The Polo is a size below the Golf and it comes in two and four door hatches. So, it was easy to slide the Cross Polo platform under the Beetle to come up with the Dune.

History?

The VW Beetle cut its chops in the famous Mexico road and off road race, the Baja 1000. Heavily modified to withstand the wicked conditions, these light weight cars handled the roughly 1000 km trek rather well. The Baja Bugs became famous as racing VW's. So almost 50 years later, VW is doing what amounts to more or less a tribute edition.

You can see that the upcoming Dune has all the design cues that made a Baja Bug instantly recognizable. Well, no it doesn't have the cut off fenders, but I think you get my drift.

My thoughts? I like it. The New Beetle sold successfully for several years, before it was updated to make it more manly. Not sure how the newer version is selling, but I hardly ever see them around ( I see many more Tesla's), so I think that tells you something. Will the Dune help? The cliched answer would be, that it can't hurt. Actually, I think that it will do well in a limited kind of way (hedging your bets, Barry?). Not sure when the planned release date is, but I'm sure any VW dealer will happily accept your deposit.

Until next time.......