ON PAPER, at least, the current incarnation of Volkswagen's Beetle has little in common with Dr Porsche's original air-cooled people's car, being a Golf MKIV in everything but name and shape.

Not that this matters, of course. Volkswagen's crude, noisy and comfortless rear engined, air-cooled original is the last thing that modern buyers would want. For them, the Beetle must be anything but the basic, functional transport envisioned by the original's creator, Dr Ferdinand Porsche, back in 1945.

Modern Volkswagen Beetles are bought as fashion accessories, as second or third cars for the weekend jaunt or the trip to the squash club.

Don't buy a Volkswagen Beetle if you've a tendency towards the shy and retiring. Even now, people still stare. Go for the 2.0litre and power comes from a bog standard eight-valve engine – it's torquey, rather than terrifically quick. Here, 100 is quickly dispatched in 10.9s on the way to 185kph. If you want even more style, try the Beetle Cabriolet. With either bodystyle, there's a choice of five engines, the 75bhp 1.4-litre, the 102bhp 1.6-litre, that 2.0-litre 115bhp unit, the trusty 150bhp 1.8-litre Turbo or the 105bhp 1.9TDI diesel. There's also an option of a six-speed automatic gearbox with the 2.0-litre petrol engine.

If anything, the Beetle interior is even more of a shock than the outside; full marks to the design team for doing the job properly, rather than filling it with Golf and Polo dials from the Volkswagen parts bin. Of course, there are plenty of tell-tale Volkswagen signs; the switches, the firm seats, the positive gearbox – but you don't really notice them.

Like all modern Volkswagens, the Beetle feels like it's hewn from stone, with the kind of build quality you'd expect from something twice as expensive. The little touches help too; the lovely blue instrument lighting which illuminates only the figures on the speedometer; the beautifully designed unique-fit stereo. Even the Cabriolet feels solid. Unlike many open-top conversions, it doesn't flex like a wobbleboard when the road is anything less than billiard table smooth. The Golf-based chassis is renowned as one of the stiffest around and the decapitation process has retained much of that torsional rigidity.

On the road, the ride is Germanically firm and the handling competent but generally uninspiring. There's the basis here, however, for a fine performance car but none of the engines quite deliver the requisite oomph. To be fair, the 1.8T manages the rest to 100 sprint in 8.7s on the way to 202kph. The entry-level 1.4-litre model takes 14.6s to do the 0-100kph and so best mimics the original Beetle's driving experience.

The Beetle, being based on the old MKIV Golf and hardly in the first flush of youth itself, doesn't come with Volkswagen's latest engine technology installed. The units are tried and tested but fuel economy by and large isn't what we've come to expect. The 1.9TDI diesel is the exception here: despite its age, it's still capable of 52mpg returns with emissions of 143g/km. The petrol contingent's best performer is the 1.4 with 40mpg and 169g/km. Its worst is the 2.0-litre with its 32mpg and 210g/km.

Hard top or cabriolet, the Beetle is an unashamed indulgence, both on the part of its makers and those who will buy it. There's no rational reason for shelling out on a convertible, but then if we did everything for rational reasons, the world would be very dull indeed.

- JONATHAN CROUCH