NB disappearing?

We are hiding them. It is part of a plot to wipe out Ford. Don't tell anyone.

Hey I thought most of the new ones selling are TOPLESS now!! Maybe you just don't notice them anymore! later, dave Reminder........ Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them, and you have their shoes. Frieda Norris

I've read that there is no intent to keep the NB around forever. The New Beetle is based on the A4 chassis upon which the already-replaced in Europe, and soon to be replace in North America Golf and Jetta/Bora are based. Since the NB Cabrio is new, I'd expect it to be around for a few more years, but I'd expect the hatch to go away sooner, in the same way as the A1 Cabrio outlived the A1 hatch by several years.

The New Beetle will be in production until 2008. It's a 10 year production run.

Ah, but then what can we expect the cabriolet offering will be...?

Something like this I hope:

Theoretically. But VW was considering dropping it at one point a year or two ago because of major slumping of sales. The Cabriolet variant has managed to re-vitalize the model somewhat, but it'll probably fade as the coupe' did. The Turbo S failied to garner almost any attention. The GLI's rims and Recaro seats would help a little, especially if combined with the RSi bodywork. I could care less if they drop it, I've never been a big fan of the NB.

Volkswagen has spent enough on the NB, and will keep it in production. It is still selling enough to make it a viable vehicle.

Answer to your question: yes and no.

The New Beetle is on the A4 platform, shared with the current golf, jetta and Audi TT, among others. A few months back, VW introduced the A5 platform and the new Golf for Europe, which we will see '05 or '06. So, with the A4 platform on the way out, VW will probably let the beetle die, as the excitement of "owning part of history" has faded dramatically, hence the NB convertible and the like (MINIs and PT Cruisers fall under the same category, they had their day in the lime light, but they are really on the way out and constant improvements and convertibles are the only things keeping sales up)

I'd give it another two years...

No, they won't. They decided to keep it in production after the sales fallout and they've already offcially announced that it will continue in production on the MKIV platform. They kept the Golf Cabrio on the MKIII platform through

The model is slated to continue till' 2008 unless the floor totally falls out from under it and VW decides to trash it. However, when the MKV models reach North America (especially the 200Hp 2.0t powered GTi) I expect they'll up the power on 1.8T powered models.

The next Cabrio will probably be a convertible version of the current "A" car ( Golf/Jetta/Bora) at the time the NB is discontinued.

"Probably" being the operative word. The current concepts that VW has out, their work on the C1 platform as well as the introduction of the Golf V, make it hard hard to say what road they'll take for their next cabrio. The Beetle's sales have already slumpped low enough once to tempt VW to discontinue the model early, which indicates to me that the model won't continue to exist after

Traditionally VW has continued using up the parts bin in the roofless models.

In fact Sciroccos would cut the bleeding edge, cabs would bring up the rear and close out chassis lines.

Following this we can see the NB selling a bit past the rolling out worldwide of the VW A5 chassis based Golf etc.

otoh, there is a newish crew in charge nowadays vs back in the olden days so who knows.

TBerk