Starring Lindsay Lohan, Matt Dillon, and Michael Keaton. Rated general.

The lure of the automobile has been part of cinematic life ever since their simultaneous beginnings at the ass end of the 19th century. These key mechanical inventions reached some kind of absurd apotheosis in 1968, when The Love Bug came along. Like The Mod Squad on TV, the Disney movie represented a strained attempt to reconcile Vietnam-era youth culture with mainstream daydreams. And the car was German, ferchrissakes, in an age of gargantuan gas guzzlers from Detroit.

Now the gas is starting to run out, but Americans still love them cars. Here the affair is consummated with the return of Herbie, the curiously self-motivated VW whose post-Woodstock exploits are amusingly recalled in a mixed-media title sequence set to a Beach Boys song. (The clever original music is from Mark Mothersbaugh.) Fully Loaded, however, isn't as Herbivorous as you might expect from the Disney remake shop. If not teeth, exactly, the movie has considerable spark, supplied both by Lindsay Lohan, as Maggie Peyton, who really loves to race, and director Angela Robinson, whose affection for both her cast and old-school moviemaking is contagious.

Robinson tackled edgier fare with her first feature, D.E.B.S., out earlier this year. There are few lesbian-schoolgirl assassins here, although there are some cast holdovers, such as Jill Ritchie, playing Maggie's ditzy best friend, and Jimmi Simpson, who is again the bad guy's lovable sidekick. But the director has mastered the difficult art of appealing to an audience's best instincts, whether challenging their conventions or meeting their expectations.

The conflict here, such as it is, involves Maggie's lack of vocational support from her NASCAR dad (Michael Keaton), a formerly successful racer who has mistakenly pinned his hopes on a son (Breckin Meyer, in a mostly thankless role) who isn't all that talented on the track. Getting ready for college, Maggie picks up Herbie at a junkyard while looking for a simple summer runabout. Due to his peculiar combination of empathy and ornery individualism-much like the role black maids used to play in Hollywood movies-the battered silver beetle subsequently helps take our heroine to the next level.

She finds worthy support in the form of a hunky mechanic (Justin Long) who admires her more than she realizes, and she acquires just the right adversary in Trip Murphy, a smarmy race king perfectly played by Matt Dillon. He sticks to the American Dream writ large and macho, rather than resorting to villainous antics.

Will Herbie win the big race or submit to the ritual humiliation of the gladiatorial demo derby? The results are predictable. But by refashioning the human-car connection for another generation, Robinson has easygoing fun with side issues involving gender and class. Now she just needs to come up with an auto that requires no petroleum products.