Autoeroticism has nothing to do with being in love with your car, but if it did it’d be one of the first words you’d use to describe the New Beetle.

There’s something about the New Beetle that makes people smile, something that makes them happy when they see one, something that makes them want to be near it … even to touch it and run a hand across its rounded flanks (see, we said it was kinda sexy!) And just exactly what that something might be is both easy and hard to define.

To start with, the thing’s positively puppydog cute. Some might consider aggression a cornerstone of automotive styling, but the New Beetle is so non-threatening it comes across like all it really wants to do (baby) is be friends with you.

It looks like a toddler’s toy car; it looks how a kid unconcerned about cars would draw one; it looks, of course, like a space-age cartoon version of the original.

That’s obviously the point, but underneath the New Beetle’s smiley, happy demeanour is a sophisticated design effort that goes well beyond reworking a 20^th century icon to cash in on nostalgia.

Yes, there are retro touches aplenty, and yes, there are echoes of almost every ‘traditional’ Beetle feature (we won’t dwell on them, because even undiscovered tribes in what’s left of the Amazon rainforest surely know about the dashboard vase) but it’s the way they’ve all been put together that really make the car.

The New Beetle has been styled, art-directed and designer-designed to within an inch of its life. Everything blends or contrasts, everything works together, everything pleases the eye. In short, for a mass-produced ‘people’s car’ it takes style and attention to design detail to a whole new level.

And that’s just as well really because, apart from its style, the New Beetle isn’t really a standout car at all … in fact it’s not even terribly friendly.

With its front-mounted, water-cooled engine, and a hardly proletarian pricetag up near $37K, the New Beetle is almost the anti-Beetle. Form followed function in the original but function firmly follows style in the newcomer, and while it’s well ahead of its predecessors in interior packaging, the overall design definitely compromises practicality compared to its more ‘conventional’ contemporaries. It’s more personal car than a people’s car.

Personality car is probably an even better term, but underneath the cute curves is an engineering package that’s verging on anonymous.

The New Beetle shares its underpinnings with various other new VWs which means, in this case, a transverse eight-valve four-pot that displaces 1984cc and puts 85kW through the front wheels. With MacPherson struts up front and a torsion beam axle arrangement out back it’s a thoroughly conventional, thoroughly proven platform though and NVH, ride and handling are all well sorted.

You can expect mild understeer, decent brakes, direct steering, and average performance, but if you’re looking for some sort of driving epiphany, forget it. The New Beetle’s curves and stylised looks might be vaguely reminiscent of Audi’s TT coupe but its performance is more in ‘sensible transport’ mode … at least until VW gets with the program and starts to bring in the 1.8 turbocharged version.