VW Cyberbeetle Is Just as Ugly as Its Name Says, Cybertruck Ruins Yet Another Iconic Car

Why is that? Well, not because it came to be at a time of great struggle for the European continent. And certainly not because the man most often associated with our world’s most devastating conflict, Adolf Hitler, was in some ways responsible for its arrival. But because the little German car was a sales hit the likes of which the world has rarely seen before, and since.

Alongside much more present vehicles the likes of the Chevrolet Suburban, Honda Accord, or Ford F-150, the tiny Beetle is one of the most long-lived car nameplates in the world: it was introduced in 1938, and production didn’t really stop in some parts of the world (read Mexico) until 2003. That’s an average human lifetime, 65 years!

During all this time, over 21.5 million cars of the Beetle variety were made and sold, and that achievement is not owed to some luxurious trait of the model, or the fact that it packed some incredibly impressive engine, but because it was simple to use, fun to drive, and most importantly, cheap.

It was also instantly recognizable, no matter the year it was made, as the design of the Beetle changed little over the six decades it stayed in production. Even the New Beetle, Volkswagen’s attempt to revive the moniker in the late 1990s, had pretty much the same design lines: it was round all over.

Why, then, would someone try and come up with an angular, sharp Beetle inspired by Tesla’s Cybertruck? Probably because that’s what everyone with a little bit of talent at digitally manipulating shapes and sizes has been doing ever since 2019, when Elon Musk first presented his toolbox on wheels to the public.

The latest attempt at remaking iconic cars into the shape of the Cybertruck was done recently at the request of British firm Leasing Options. Five cars went under the digital knife, including the MINI we discussed last week, and today’s Volkswagen Beetle.

We were pretty unhappy with how the MINI would have looked had someone really made it in Cybertruck’s image, but we find the Beetle attempt even worse.

Just look at the thing. Nothing is lovable about it. The curves that are a hallmark of the breed are gone, replaced by sharp edges. The large wheel arches are still there, but no longer hugging the wheels by taking their shape, but wrestling them into submission with brute force. The beautiful nose of the Bug is now an aggressive snout, and even the car’s eyes, those lovingly round headlights so many people adorned with eyelashes over the years, have been replaced by squarish LEDs.

In one word, ugly, and not something that can be easily unseen. And there's more from where that came from, so stay tuned for extra abominations.