I absolutely love my Volkswagen Beetle. I've had it for almost 4 years and have had no mechanical problems with it whatsoever. That is my favorite thing about the car! It also gets fantastic gas mileage, and I do mostly stop and go driving. My Beetle has fantastic pick-up / acceleration, which makes me feel more confident when making left turns in between breaks in on-coming traffic. It also helps with getting around slower drivers. Fantastic turn radius, can make U-turns very easily. I find it to be a very smooth ride, and a friend who is 6' 2" found it comfortable, with plenty of head room. The look and style of it is adorable, it has a bit of a retro feel, which I love. It has side airbags which makes me feel more secure. People never honk, it seems like no one can get annoyed with someone driving a Volkswagen Beetle!

I bought a used VW Beetle from a friend because I needed dependable, inexpensive transportation. It was an utter no-frills, army-green VW Beetle. It was dependable in warm weather, though it had trouble starting in the very cold winters of the Northeast. Also, the heater left a lot to be desired on cold mornings: it was like trying to warm a small room with a blow dryer and heating the windshield took a while, believe me. The car was fun to drive, zipping in traffic and easily parked in small spaces. However, the controls in the car were so tiny and everything else about the car was so tiny that it seemed like a toy car. There was no beating that car for gas mileage. I'm not one to pore over figures for exact gas mileage but I noticed on a cross-country trip that I got about 30 miles to the gallon in that old thing! It seemed to drive forever on a tank of gas. I had that car for about 4 years and it was certainly worth the $800 I paid my friend for it. Eventually, I was doing better financially and traded it in when I bought my Honda Accord. I believe I got $150 for it in the trade-in.