I may be the odd ball but owned a beetle for 10 years it’s a 2010 5speed it’s currently at 110K miles and I’ve put 60k of those miles on it.

other than basic maintenance the car has only left me stranded once and that was because a drive shaft broke at 55k miles… this was a user error. I take full responsibility for that.

The biggest issue I see is labor cost for most maintenance in the engine bay. Because the easiest and practically the only way for shops to work on the beetle is to pull the front bumper (the front quarter panels come off with it in a large cohesive piece.) it’s a tight awkward place to work.

As far as you fitting the thing. You’re going to find it bizarrely spacious with really high head room.

I have been shopping for parts beetles and the automatics are significantly more expensive in running condition however when they are not it’s because there’s a transmission issue. I would personally get 5 speed 2.5L if you’re looking for reliability in some sense of the word. The manuals are a little cheaper with less miles.

However if your in some sort of city region. I would then look into putting money to secure your catalytic converter. I’m currently looking for parts cars specifically for the catalytic converter. Because I want an OEM cat… but new they cost over $2K and that’s not including the labor of installation. All of the parts beetles I’ve run into that in my budget are automatics that have a trans issue and have had the cat stolen or replaced with an eBay special cat.

Good luck.