Occasionally I have a car that's like honey to bears, writes Brian Byrne. People wind down their window and ask questions if stopped in traffic beside you. They knock on your door if you're sitting in it parked. They’re gathered around, peering in, when you come back after shopping. They all want to know what’s the buzz?
The Volkswagen ID Buzz. There’s something about it. Especially if you’re driving the two-tone bright yellow and white one currently on Volkswagen Ireland’s evaluation fleet.
Clever people, those Volkswageners. They know that nostalgia is something very strong in car marketing. Even if decreasingly few of us remember when a yellow Volkswagen ‘bus’ was a symbol of freedom. The yellow pop-top VW van used by the characters in James Michener’s ‘The Drifters’ in his 1971 blockbuster novel has outlived the story and the drugs-fuelled sleaze that underpinned it. It’s part of today’s folk memory distilled through generations into a hazy essence of pleasurable irresponsibility. You may never have read ‘The Drifters’, nor seen the movie. But you know, in your waters, that a yellow VW van has always lurked in your dreams.
When Volkswagen rolled out the concept in 2017 that was to become the ID Buzz they were unashamedly scratching the primordial itch of human beings needing to go beyond their safe home caves and forests. Finally rolled into showrooms last year as passenger and cargo versions in Volkswagen’s electric vehicles programme, the ID Buzz suggested Drifters for the 21st century.
People want it to be their fantasy vehicle to run away to their dreams. It isn’t, of course. The Buzz is a 5-seat car in the shape of a van, on the dedicated platform that VW developed for all their brands’ EV models. So you’re driving an Audi Q4 e-tron, a Volkswagen ID4, a Skoda Enyaq, even a Cupra Born. Garbed in unadulterated sentimental mush.
The Buzz is spacious, wider than the Transporter camper van, for instance, that is the real ICE successor to that iconic 1960s yellow pop-top. And it actually doesn’t have a camper version. Yet. It’s a 5-seat car with a whopping cargo area, and there are 6- and 7-seat variants coming down the line. It is high-riding to the point that your passengers can enjoy views over the hedgerows that they’ve not seen before.
As an electric car it is uncannily quiet after many years of diesel grumble from Volkswagen’s vans, and certainly different to the putt-putt of the original opposed-four petrol engines in those 1960s predecessors. And the ID Buzz proved itself to be a surprisingly nice-handling drive even on some of the local roads which I regularly use to find suspension thump.
The range rated at 424km was optimistic if I was only using motorways — which is the case anyway with any kind of engine — but over the week of review wasn’t too far off the mark. Consumption averaged 20.5kWh/100km. I was impressed at how quickly I could get an 80pc charge at my local service area. A place where I got a fair bit of that attention I outlined earlier.
While the colour scheme gave a perception of softness, the ID Buzz is as strongly built as any of its Transporter cousins. But I wouldn’t advise buying it with the similarly yellow interior colours. Only registered six months, the seats fabric was already looking dingy. The other downside is the price. Which really puts it far outside the financial range of the hippyesque demographic of The Drifters, or their modern equivalent in escape dreamers.
And, just in case you think I’m stretching the nostalgia thing, I once did a VW pop-top trip, with my family when we then had just two small boys. We flew to Liverpool during the mid-70s, and drove our rental from there to Land’s End and back over a week or so. It worked out better than you might think … though for some reason I’ve never since had the urge to go the camper route to a dream. Or even a holiday.
PRICE: From €66,295; review car €78,515. WHAT I LIKED: Better than a dog for making new acquaintances.
