The Love Bug is made-for-television film starring Bruce Campbell and a sequel to the original The Love Bug film. The sequel included a Dean Jones cameo, tying it to the previous films; and introduced an evil black Volkswagen named Horace, "the Hate Bug", giving the film a much darker tone than the other "Herbie" films.

The film is a part reboot and part sequel, in that the events of the original 1969 film are repeated while the storyline plots to follow 1980's Herbie Goes Bananas. It can also be thought a prototype of Herbie: Fully Loaded, in that both show a later racer finding Herbie in a junkyard and restoring him.

This 1997 Love Bug film marks the first new appearance of Herbie in more than 15 years, following the Bug's lone TV series Herbie the Matchmaker, which had ended after five episodes.