Little Beetle colored yellow, oh how you have mellowed. Scrapes and chips abound, the old bumper cap never to be found. Soon you will be gone, faded out like a winter lawn.

Yes, our Volkswagen New Beetle's lease is just about up. (And yes, it's clear why we're automotive writers instead of poets.) From the way the car still turns heads, it would seem that Volkswagen's New Beetle is still highly regarded by the American public. That is quite an impressive feat for a two-year-old car.

April was time for our car's 12-month/20,000-mile service. The service is heavy on examination. It calls for inspecting nearly all of the major components and systems. The only items that specifically need to be replaced are the fuel filter and the pollen filter for the passenger compartment. Additionally, we wanted a few other problems to be examined and fixed.

First, our car had a shimmy in the steering wheel at speeds over 60 mph. Second, we wanted the air conditioning inspected. A lingering problem with this car, the air conditioning system didn't seem to be putting out cold air. Finally, we wanted the missing front bumper cap replaced and the cap for the emergency brake handle button to be reattached.

We had our editorial assistant take our Beetle to the dealership. When she arrived at the dealer, she found herself in a line of other New Beetles. No one greeted her and it was a few minutes before she located our assigned service adviser. The advisor seemed overworked and rather anxious, but both he and the mechanic seemed unusually affable and eager to please -- and eager to help us save money (!). The mechanic told us that he would road test the Beetle (part of the major service) and then try an easier fix for the shimmy first (i.e., rotate the tires), before moving on to more expensive remedies.

When we returned to pick up our Beetle, we were informed that the mechanic had had rotated the Beetle's front tires to the rear in the hopes of correcting the front-end shimmy. He said the wheels still didn't feel totally balanced in the back, but that was because the tires were "out of round" and needed to be replaced (which he didn't think we would want to do at the end of our lease).

Overall, our Beetle received a clean bill of heath. No additional parts needed to be replaced. It was rather expensive, however, with the final tally coming to $387.85. Nearly all of this cost was labor. Particularly offensive was the $50.05 charge to replace the e-brake cap.

The air conditioning wasn't quite fixed, either. The mechanic charged the air conditioning system with refrigerant but warned that this was only a temporary solution. He thought that there might be a more serious problem with the system (though he found no obvious leaks), but he would need more time to examine the Beetle. Unfortunately, we couldn't leave the car at the dealership any longer, as our technical editor Scott Memmer needed the VW for a trip to San Francisco.

Scott reported that everything on our Beetle seemed to be in order after the dealership experience. The air conditioning worked fine for the duration of the three-day trip to San Francisco. However, within another week, the air conditioning was once again unable to produce cold air. Call us kooky, but this problem sure does sound like a leak of some sort.

We have about 30 more days with the Beetle. We will be producing our final report on this car soon. If you own a New Beetle, we'd love to hear about your ownership experiences with your car. Provide us with information that you think would be useful to other New Beetle owners or potential buyers. We will then consider incorporating your comments into our summary.

To participate, e-mail us with your commentary, along with your:

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