KINT 104 The Lookback Machine: Motor Trend's 1990s Predictions

How'd We Do? Right, Wrong, and Not Even Close

- AARON GOLD

“The historian,” wrote Frederich Von Schlegel, “is a prophet looking backwards.” We certainly made more than our share of predictions in the ’90s; we were right about some, wrong about others, and downright embarrassed by a few. Here are a half-dozen of our 1990s projections and their eventual outcomes.

1990: Volkswagen Should Bring Back the Beetle

In his June 1990 column, MotorTrend editor Jack Nerad recounted a chat with a Volkswagen PR rep who fretted about the company’s sinking market share. Nerad’s suggestion: Bring back the Beetle. “Volkswagen has lost its reputation for low-cost, reliable ‘transportation’ cars to the Japanese and Koreans,” he wrote. The PR man scoffed—surely Nerad didn’t mean the Beetle? “I wasn’t proposing the reintroduction of a several-decades-old model,” Nerad said. “I was suggesting fresh, modern mechanicals under a Beetle skin. They didn’t think much of this idea, either.”

Outcome: We Were Right 

Perhaps Volkswagen didn’t completely ignore our man Nerad: Three and a half years later VW showed the Concept 1, a Beetle shape on modern Golf mechanicals. The public response was so overwhelmingly positive that VW set about putting it into production, and the resulting New Beetle ballooned the automaker’s sales by nearly 60 percent in 1997 and another 44 percent in 1999. If VW had listened to us in 1990, it could have had a much better decade.

1990: Dodge Will Get Its Own Version of the Jeep Grand Cherokee