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After a decades-long run that made it one of the world's favorite cars, the Volkswagen Beetle was resurrected as the Golf-based New Beetle in 1998. It was warmly embraced (mostly by U.S. buyers), but not for long. The initial frenzy saw sales shoot past 80,000 units and then swan dive to fewer than 20,000 by 2010. Volkswagen's somewhat surprising move to give its retro machine a second act has resulted in the all-new (but no longer capital n New) Beetle for 2012, which the company would like you to think of as less cute and much sportier but still retro.