Beetle

The Volkswagen Beetle continues to defy the laws of economics, becoming one of the hottest collector car investments at the same time as being the most plentiful. Though the collector car market has cooled, 36 of the 50 most valuable Beetles have been sold in the last three years.

A new experiment from Indiana University has shown how natural selection can create complex traits out of existing genetic “building blocks”, and to illustrate this the team used a relatively simple genetic tool to grow a functional third eye on the forehead of beetles.

VW of America has announced that it will be sponsoring the ProjectBaja.com Class 11 VW Beetle in the 50th BFGoodrich Tires SCORE Baja 1000 race in mid-November. The race team is based in Denver, Colorado and plans to take the old-school Beetle out into one of the toughest races on the planet.

We're very used to writing about cars with names like "Ferrari" and "McLaren" blowing past the 200-mph (322-km/h) mark, but this month, it's the more everyday names of Volkswagen and Honda. Both automakers drove specially prepared land speed record cars to over 200 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

We spent a week with the Beetle Dune that harkens back to the Baja Bugs of the 1960s and 1970s. Although this modern rendition isn't built to tackle the open desert, sand dunes and beaches​ like the vehicles that inspired it, we found the Beetle Dune to hold a lot of appeal nonetheless.

The VW Beetle might have started life as low-cost transport for the masses, but its modern reinvention has been all about style. The latest addition to the stable is no different, taking inspiration from modified "Baja Bugs" to create the rugged-looking Beetle Dune.

Researchers have discovered how the bombardier beetle is capable of producing a unique defensive mechanism, whereby the beetle induces a chemical explosion inside it's shell, creating a boiling, toxic liquid which is then sprayed at its aggressor.

Volkswagen has revealed more details of the vehicle it will use in the Red Bull Global Rallycross championship later this season. With 544 hp (405 kW) from its 1.6-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, the GRC Beetle is little more than a distant relative from your grandma's Beetle.

Volkswagen is taking its iconic Beetle to the rallycross circuit, announcing at the 2014 Chicago Auto Show that the Global Rallycross (GRC) Beetle will compete in the 2014 Global Rallycross Championship season.

Last week, Volkswagen released a sketch of its 2014 Beetle Dune concept, which it promised to show at the North American International Auto Show. Well, that event is now in progress, and we did indeed spot the car on the tradeshow floor in Detroit.

Over the past couple of years, Volkswagen has revealed various Beetle derivatives at major US auto shows, including an electric Beetle and Beetle Convertible. For this year's NAIAS, it has something a little more fun and playful in mind. The Beetle Dune is a rugged, sand-ready Beetle concept.

Volkswagen chose the 2013 Shanghai Auto Show for the world première of its iBeetle – a marriage of Volkswagen’s iconic Beetle and Apple's equally iconic iPhone.