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I’ve driven thousands of cars. But no one ever followed me home. No one begged me to stop for photographs, or pleaded with me to linger in a mall parking lot to placate a friend who was trapped at a checkout counter, and who would “just die if she couldn’t see this” — the 1998 Volkswagen Beetle.

And that wasn’t the half of it.

Teenage girls squealed in unison at the sight of the new Beetle, and their male counterparts, though less expressive, were equally awestruck.

People allowed me to get in front of them in traffic. Allowed? Heck, they invited me to go before them. At a Wendy’s restaurant in Northern Virginia, customers pulled out of the drive-through line to get a closer look. A worker at the place asked if I could leave the car there all day, because “it’s good for business.”

And the people who followed me home? Three cars, one holding teenagers and two occupied by folks of considerably older vintage, trailed me several blocks until I turned into my driveway. “We hope you don’t mind,” said one of the adults. “We just wanted to see the car.”

All this for an update of a putt-putt economobile — designed for Hitler’s Third Reich — that arrived on these shores in 1949 and remained for a generation marked by hippies, free love, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the assassinations of Bobby, Martin and John, and the eventual demise of flower power.

The new Beetle is packed with comparable emotion, minus the unhappy stuff. It is a smile-mobile, a work of exterior design that actually grins front and rear — and comes with a dash-mounted flower vase.

The object is to exploit nostalgia as well as the passion of a new generation of buyers, and the new Beetle does both masterfully. There is enough of the old car, in design and presentation, to pull at the heartstrings of baby boomers, and there’s loads of new stuff to attract younger buyers looking for something different and affordable. Visually, most other cars are boring by comparison, repetitive renditions of aerodynamic styling that do nothing for the soul. The new Beetle looks like nothing else on the road.

It would be wonderful if, positively, it shared the same distinction in driving. It doesn’t. And that might disappoint some people who equate the value of any car with its ability to go fast, or snuggle into hairpin curves with the competence of a Porsche 911.

The new Beetle is not that kind of car. Like its predecessor, it essentially is a commuter. But the new car is different in every other way. It is front-engine, front-wheel drive versus rear-engine, rear drive. The tested, 2-liter, 115-horsepower, inline four-cylinder engine is cooled by water instead of air. And four adults comfortably can sit in the two-door car, at least on trips of 50 miles or less.

The gasoline smell that permeated the interiors of old Beetles is nowhere in existence in the new; nor is the bumpety-bumpiness, so inherent in short-wheelbase cars, that turned ride s over imperfect roads in the old cars into frightful torture contests.

Because the engine is up front in the new Beetle, the cargo space is in the rear; and there’s a fair amount of it for a small car — 12 cubic feet with the rear seats up.

A five-speed manual transmission is standard for the Mexico-built Beetle, which is based on the same platform and shares about 80 percent of the components of the Volkswagen Golf. An adaptive, electronically controlled four-speed automatic is optional.

Standard brakes include power four-wheel discs, and there is a host of other standard stuff, much of it, such as air bags, mandated by the federal government.

Older folks frequently boasted about how they paid less than $2,000 for their first Beetle, which was charming, but which only served to emphasize that the new car is in no way your father’s Volkswagen.

1998 Volkswagen Beetle

Complaints: The new Beetle’s long dashboard, which is disturbingly reminiscent of s milar protuberances in General Motors Corp.’s first APV vehicles.

Praise: An overall excellent and enjoyable rework of a classic that defined a generation.

Ride, acceleration and handling: A triumvirate of decency. Nothing exceptional. Nothing to complain about. Good braking. An overall solid little runner.

Head-turning quotient: Absolutely, 100 percent, without a doubt the most outstanding neck-snapper I’ve ever driven.

Mileage: About 24 miles per gallon. Fuel tank holds 14.5 gallons of regular unleaded. Estimated range is 335 miles on usuable volume of fuel, running mostly highway with a variety of kith, kin and light cargo.

Sound system: Incredibly good! Six-speaker, AM/FM stereo radio and cassette with optional, trunk-mounted CD player installed by Volkswagen.

Price:Base price on the tested 2-liter Beetle is $15,200. Dealer’s invoice on the base model is $14,336. Price as tested is $16,880, including $1,180 in options and a $500 destination charge.

Purse-strings note: A1.9-liter, four-cylinder, 90-horsepower diesel-powered Beetle is available, and a 150-horsepower, turbo diesel Beetle is coming this spring at a base price of $16,475. If you want a Beetle, you want a Beetle. There is no substitute.