After a stronger start, European sales of the supposedly epoch-making VW ID 3 have slowed to around 4000 cars per month (a fraction of those of piston-engined heavyweights like the Golf, Polo and T-Roc). But VW’s other EVs are proving more popular. And with two new entry-level EV superminis due within a year or so, right now the firm is hoping that by ‘going large’ and adding greater diversity to its zero-emissions range, it can tempt families with active lifestyles – and some with longer memories and more sentimental tendencies, perhaps – to convert.
The VW ID Buzz, says the brand, is “the new face of future-orientated, sustainable family mobility”. In principle, and leaving aside how it’s powered, it’s a five-seat, full-size monocab MPV of a kind that found favour on our roads 20 years ago but has since fallen out of it. Call it a ‘minibus’ if you like, but it’s unlike key rivals, because it adopts a relatively sophisticated passenger car platform rather than being adapted from a commercial vehicle.
The car’s outline and its primary design features – oversized VW roundel on the bonnet, almost full-length glasshouse, evocative styling of the D-pillar – are references to its ancestor executed neatly and studiously enough to make the effect land without the car becoming a laboured pastiche.
Few new cars have been previewed and teased quite as often as Volkswagen’s ‘new Type 2’ has over the past 20 years. And now that the VW ID Buzz is finally with us, it’s unlikely to disappoint, whether you’re a VW Camper devotee or more of a casual convert who likes the idea of versatility-first electric family motoring.
Some might have preferred a more genuinely small and cleverly packaged modern Microbus, others simply a more affordable one. But even critics could easily warm to it.
Full review at the link...