As the 90s rolled around, the original Beetle had been in production for over 60 years. It was time for a refresh, a New Beetle. The re-design of an icon is no easy feat, with the New Beetle's design going through several iterations over the span of 4 years.
The 1998 New Beetle was then in production. The car wasn't going to sell itself, so Volkswagen set out to make a race car to get more exposure and make the New Beetle look fast and cool. After a year of treasure hunting the bottomless VAG parts bin, the development of the 1999 Volkswagen New Beetle Cup was complete. The Cup was raced for 2 official series', the 99 Cup series and the 00 Millennium Cup. The New Beetle was sometimes raced along with the Lupo Cup.
There is not much reliable info online about the New Beetle Cup, so a lot of the specs are speculation and guessing. Despite coming with a stripped out interior, The New Beetle Cup weighed almost as much as the road car, due to all the safety equipment and a bigger motor. The motor was not your base model inline 4, but rather the 2.8L VR6 from the Golf Mk3. The VR6 was not very powerful on its own, so the engine had some simple modifications to it, including new cams and adjusted timing. All this goodness transferred to the front wheels with a Quaife LSD. The 99 Cup season was sponsored by Pirelli, so all cars stick to the ground with a set of P-Zeros.
I took some liberties and rather put Kunos semis on it, because pummeling a 200hp car around with infinite grip didn't make for very engaging driving.
SPECS:
VMAX: ~200km/h
Weight: 1357kg
Power: 246bhp @ 6800rpm
Torque: 274nm @ 5600rpm
Gears: 5
Drivetrain: FWD
Acceleration: 8.1 Sec
VERSION: 1.0
After everyone involved had their fun racing Beetles, some of the Volkswagen board members thought it would be a hoot and a holler to cram the internals of the to-be MK4 R32 into a New Beetle. So a bunch of VAG engineers got drunk on the cheapest bulk lager (this truly is a Volkswagen story) and got to work. Finished product was the $80,000 New Beetle RSi. Only 250 examples were ever built, so even if you were rich enough to afford one of them new, the last thing on your mind would be to take it to the track.
Either way this is video games so I just threw together a track day RSi to cruise around. The "Club RSi" features 4MOTION AWD, a 400hp tuned 3.2L VR6, new rear suspension and some grippy slicks. The platform is adjustable.
SPECS:
VMAX: ~260km/h
Weight: 1557kg
Power: 400bhp @ 6800rpm
Torque: 425nm @ 5600rpm
Gears: 6
Drivetrain: 4MOTION AWD (HALDEX)
Acceleration: 5.0 Sec
VERSION: 1.0
KNOWN ISSUES
The model is not perfect, it was a practice piece with perspective modelling but i think its passable quality. the UV is also a bit weird at places primarily because that was done with a bottle of rum on my desk.
No shifter anim
No wipers (i forgor :skull
No seatbelt on driver (will probably fix in another Life)
No LODs
CREDITS:
Physics: Tunari
Modelling: Tunari
Skins: Tunari
Animations: Tunari
Ext-config: Tunari, Tes
Sounds: Tes
Technical consultation: Tes, Pastor
Special thanks to all my beetle friends for racing earlier iterations of this with me.
The New Beetle is my favorite car (after corvette c3) so I hope you have as much fun with it as I do.
