Three problems related to side/window air bag have been reported for the 1999 Volkswagen Beetle. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
Sending my daughter to college in this cute little red bug. Every vw dealership and their brother, is aware of a driver side airbag defect in these cute little things. My dealer will repair the faulty wiring and belt buckle, as they did for the school teacher I bought this cute little thing from. What school teachers won't do is replace the faulty airbag in the side for six years because they think, "OH I am safe enough with a front airbag only!" and nobody wants to spend $700 for a little side airbag. But I think vw should recall the side airbag for putting in so many faulty side airbags as a whole bunch of cute school teachers and cute little freshman students like my little precious girl drive around these bugs with a smile on there face. And the cute light with a little man holding a beach ball in his lap!.
On Dec. 9th, 2000, our Beetle was hit in the drivers side and side airbags did not deploy. "experts" at Volkswagen claimed that our forward motion at the time of impact lessened the side impact. I can understand this to some degree but by their reasoning, if we were going twice as fast, would the damage have been halved? oy. The side was so caved-in that I had to be cut out of the car with the jaws of life. People who have seen the car , including the repair shop foreman, can not believe that the airbag did not deploy. On contacting vw, I was told that being that I was moving at the time of impact, it lessened the side impact. I can understand this to some exent, but does this mean that if we were doing 100mph instead of 50mph would the damage would have been halved?.
Consumer complaint is that the side air bag on his vehicle failed to deploy when another vehicle hit the drivers side at approximately 15 mph. Consumer was traveling forward at approximately 50 to 60 mph. A pick-up truck hit consumer's car broadside on driver's side, an engineer at vw claims stated that the forward motion of vehicle lessened the side impact enough that the air bag did not activate.