Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

The new car is good-looking, make no mistake about that. I don’t doubt it will be fast, and will oversteer so controllably that the helmsmen at Autocar magazine will be tempted to rub warm oils into the gentleman bag of its chassis engineer.

We hear that in terms of size it fits neatly between the Porsche Boxster and the 911. We hear that prices will start at around £55,000, that there’s a choice of V6 or V8 power plant and that, while it will be launched as a convertible, a coupé is in the pipeline. It all sounds very well thought out and lovely.

But what in the name of all that’s holy caused Jaguar’s board to say, ‘Yes. We have the legal and moral right to make it look like an E-type. But we won’t’?

It’s not as though there isn’t a taste for retro designs right now. Fiat has the 500, which, in London at least, seems to have taken a 75 per cent share of the market. You also have the Mini, which is bought by everyone else. Ford has unveiled images of what it thinks a modern-day Cortina might look like, and then, of course, until recently we had the Chrysler PT Cruiser… which shows, I suppose, that things don’t always work out as well as the company hoped.

Speaking of which. The Volkswagen Beetle. When I was first introduced to the reincarnated version, I was much taken by it. I thought it was a great idea to clothe the VW Golf in some Wehrmacht clobber and fit a vase. I even considered buying one.

I’m glad I didn’t, because quite quickly it became clear VW had somehow missed the mark. Part of the problem is the Bug looked a bit too friendly. And friendly-looking cars – the Nissan Micra is another – always seem a bit gormless. Cars need to have at least a hint of aggression – and the Beetle didn’t.

I thought VW would give up, but it hasn’t. It has come back with another Beetle, which is lower and more purposeful. It has spooky wheels, a menacing spoiler and a hint of the night about it. Think of it as Herbie’s bank-robber cousin.

Inside, the flower-power vase is gone, and in its place you have a dash to match the colour you’ve chosen for the body, an odd glovebox, modern-day electronic equipment and the biggest fuel gauge ever fitted to any car in all of history. It’s the size of the moon. It’s so big you get the sense that you could drive for 3,000 miles in the red zone.

So – drum roll – has it worked?

Well, I hate to be a party pooper but I don’t think it has. It looks like a hippie in a Rambo suit. The Beetle may have been a by-product of war but it became a symbol of peace. And the new aggression? I don’t know. Imagine a CND symbol picked out in razor wire. A dove with machineguns.

I suppose you could soften things up with some stickers. The Mini and the Fiat 500 are available with a great many adhesive options designed to conjure up images of Mary Quant or Rome on a sunny day. But what stickers would you put on a Beetle to put you in mind of its origins? Second thoughts, best leave the stickers out of it.

And, anyway, there is no doubt some people like the design as it is. So let’s move on to see what it’s like as a car.

Not bad, is the answer. There’s a 2-litre 197-brake-horsepower version on the market, but I tried the clever 1.4 Sport, which has good fuel economy and, thanks to two turbochargers, 158 bhp as well. You have to work the six-speed gearbox hard to get at the power but it’s nice to know it’s there if you can be bothered.

The handling’s good, which is due in no small part to what is basically an electronic differential that tames the driven front wheels and allows you to drive like an ape, stamping on the throttle when really you shouldn’t.

Mostly, though, it is a comfortable and quiet, easy and relaxing cruising machine with some genuinely nice touches. The big glass sunroof is one, and the optional Fender sound system is another, partly because it glows at night, partly because the sound is good but mostly because it’s a Fender. And who wouldn’t want that in their life?

In essence it feels very like a Golf, and that’s not surprising because, of course, under the Hitler suit that’s what it is. You don’t get the practicality of a Golf – it’s quite cramped in the back – but at least the boot is bigger than it was on the last Beetle. You do, however, get a much higher standard of fit and finish, because the Golf is made in slovenly Germany, while the Beetle is made in Mexico – a byword for fastidious attention to detail, as we know.

So. The nub. The price. The Beetle costs about the same as the VW Scirocco, which, of course, has the same engine. And that seems to be rather clever. You choose. Retro or modern? Maybe that’s what Jag should have done with its new car. F-type or G-spot?

When my dad announced that he’d become engaged to a girl from the next village, his parents were mortified. ‘What’s the matter with the girls from our village?’ they cried.

Psychologists don’t call this limited-horizon thinking ‘Nissan Almera syndrome’, but they should. The Almera was just some car. White goods you bought by the pound or the foot. It did nothing badly, but it did nothing well, either. It was for people who saw no need to eat fancy food or to holiday outside Britain. It was a bucket of beige, a non-car for those frightened of the exotic.

Of course, it was not alone. There was also the Toyota Corolla. A fridge with windscreen wipers. A car for people who daren’t look at the sunset lest they become aroused. Chicken korma people.

Happily today in Britain both the Almera and the Corolla are gone, buried with the ghosts of Terry and June in a cemetery on a bypass, under a perpetually grey sky, beneath a headstone that no one will ever visit. We’ve moved on. We all want Range Rover Evoques these days. Or mini MPVs or maybe a swashbuckling coupé. The meat-and-potato hatchback is dead.

Except it isn’t. It’s lower than it used to be and more sleek. It’s replete with styling details to arouse the curiosity. It’s no longer the girl from down the street. It’s an internet bride, a brogue with scarlet laces. The Ford Escort has become the Focus, all independent rear suspension and tricksy diff. The Vauxhall Astra has stepped out of its mackintosh and slipped into a pair of open-crotch panties. Even the new Volkswagen Golf looks as if it knows where Tate Modern is.

And now we get to the Mercedes A-class, the latest frumpy-dumpy hatch to have been force-fed a diet of vodka and Red Bull. The original had two floors, one a few inches above the other. With straight faces, Merc’s engineers explained that in the event of a crash, the engine would slide into the gap and thus would not turn the occupants into paste. And I don’t doubt this was true.

So why does the new car not have such a feature? If it was such a bonzer idea, why drop it? Could it, I wonder – a bit rhetorically – have something to do with the fact that the real reason the original had two floors is that it had been conceived as an electric car and needed somewhere to store the battery?

Happily Mercedes has now realized electric cars have no future and, as a result, one floor is enough. It has also realized that it can’t just sell a packing case with wheels any more. Today we live in a skinny latte world and instant coffee won’t do. A hatchback, therefore, has to have some zing.

So the new A-class has all sorts of styling creases down the flanks, a titchy rear window and a massive bulbous nose with the grille from what appears to be a truck stuck on the front. It now looks like the sort of car they might have used on the moon base in Space 1999.

And I tested the 250 AMG version, which has massive wheels as well. I want to tell you it looked a bit silly, a bit garish, a bit overstyled. But I can’t because, actually, it looked tremendous. Many others also thought so.