Who would've expected a Denver snowstorm in late April? Luckily, our bright little yellow VW New Beetle, with its vase full of silk sunflowers, helped cheer things up during two dark, snowy days as several inches of the white stuff fell relentlessly from the sky.

Until the end of the month, we'd been enjoying the Beetle as a spring commuter. Our features editor drove the car from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Denver at the beginning of the month and enjoyed every minute behind the wheel. While traveling across the country at a fairly good clip, our turbodiesel offered excellent gas mileage, averaging better than 400 miles to a tank. The car is spunky, shooting up to speed as fast as needed. Its shifter feels smooth and its handling is amazingly similar to that of a sports car. After the trip, we discovered the New Beetle needed oil. We were surprised that the owner's manual did not mention what type of oil to put into the turbodiesel, but after calling several VW service departments, we finally confirmed the correct grade for our long-term car is 15-W40.

Our Denver drivers-just like everyone else-deplore the cupholder situation inside the car. The only cupholder that is mildly useful is the one for the rear passenger, but to use it from the front requires twisting your arm around like a contortionist. The front cupholders are too shallow even to be useful as cubbies for cell phones, pens or glasses-everything falls out! In fact, when our editor took a wrong turn in Kentucky and ended up in Tennessee instead of Ohio (and really needed her cell phone), she could not find it. She thought she'd left it at a rest area only to find out later that it had fallen out of the cupholder onto the floor and slid beneath the gas pedal. To top it off, the rear cupholder isn't large enough to hold a 20-ounce bottle of soda.

This brings us to another complaint: the lack of cubby space. There's nowhere to put cassette tapes, Chapstick or snacks in the New Beetle. The only storage spaces provided are the mesh map pockets on the doors, and dropping a few pens in there is a surefire way to have them disappear.

Aside from the excellent gas mileage, we like that the car is so much fun to drive. We appreciate the huge amount of headroom, the cool indigo and red lights on the dash, and the extreme range of motion offered by the rearview mirror-which is helpful if you're putting on lipstick at a red light or watching young'uns frolic in the backseat. The freak April snowstorm gave us the opportunity to test out the New Beetle on less than perfect road conditions and it did not disappoint. Our only complaint while driving at night in the mountains through blowing snow (you know, like "hyper-speed" in "Star Wars") was the windshield wipers. They did not clear off the massive front window adequately, making our trip more precarious than necessary.

For the most part, we have not had a problem finding gas stations that sell diesel fuel. In Hyde Park, a small Cincinnati suburb, we looked casually for diesel and could not find it at any nearby gas station. But since leaving that area, we have yet to pull into a gas station and find it does not offer diesel-even in the tiniest of Colorado mountain towns.

Our communications director found that the car's front corners were difficult to see when maneuvering through tight spaces, and she ended up slightly scraping the right bumper on a brick wall near her driveway. Later, the driver's seat-tilt lever came off in her hand when she was loading something into the back seat. Both of these problems will be addressed when we take the New Beetle into the shop at the end of the month for a service check.

Total Odometer Reading: 21,110
Best Fuel Economy: 46.2 mpg
Worst Fuel Economy: 35.2 mpg
Body Damage: $0
Maintenance Costs: $5.74 (oil)
Problems: Driver's side seat-tilt lever broke off.