Volkswagen’s original air-cooled Beetle was, and still is, loved the world over. It’s an icon, no less, and remains the world’s best-selling car of all time. But as we all know, all good things must come to an end, and diminishing sales throughout the ’70s and ’80s finally sounded its death knell, with the last one leaving the Mexico production line in 2003.
Somehow, though, love for the Bug didn’t diminish and Volkswagen launched its ‘New Beetle’, based on the Mk4 Golf this time, in 1998. It was made more muscular looking for the 2007 model year before being replaced by the car we’re looking at here, the A5, which went on sale in 2012.
Longer, lower and wider, it was more Beetle-like than its predecessor and certainly more sophisticated having borrowed its underpinnings from the Mk6 Golf. This meant it was available with a range of efficient TSI petrol and TDI diesel engines in
