I owned a 1974 ‘non-super’ (i.e., flat windshield) Bug for over ten years. It needed a lot of repairs in that time, it was loud and the exhaust was smelly, a spring was poking out of the side of the driver’s seat, and the door of the glove compartment would randomly flop open unless I turned the knob just so.
But I can’t look back on that jalopy without smiling. People would come up to me at gas stations and reminisce about their own Beetles. I had wanted one since I was a little kid and I’m not sorry for the years I spent with mine. And I loved those wing windows!
VWs have always been good to me, but I haven’t owned one since '77.
Graduated high school in '69; gift was a '62 microbus. I rebuilt the engine five times that Summer; yeah, I screwed up the first four rebuilds. A few days after Woodstock I got up at 7:00 AM, pulled the blown engine, rebuilt it (crankshaft, bearings, one piston and rings), tested it at 8:30 AM, packed, and left Bedford, Massachusetts. 48 hours later I was at band camp in Florence, Alabama. A few months later my clutch plate died on the highway; step-dad towed me directly into the path of a '68 Camaro and that was the end of my microbus.
In '72 I traded my '67 Lincoln Continental for a '67 Beetle, drove it a few months, replaced the engine once, then traded the '67 for a candy apple red '72 Super Beetle ($1950 brand new).
Foolishly traded the '72 with my roommate for a '72 Vega in '76. That was dumb. The Vega killed itself soon, and I ended up with a '63 Karmann Ghia, which was a lot of fun even though I had to remove the inside door panels so I could hold the doors closed with the seat belts. Fun days.
(Someone mentioned the sound of the HO engines. To keep from burning the #3 cylinder exhaust valve you set it to open up to 0.040" instead of the standard 0.032", so you got a lot of tapping noise.)
I suppose because there’s more to a car than just the chassis. The Golf is certainly much more practical, but for that very reason is almost insufferably boring. I really enjoyed the New Beetle rental I had, which was more like a cute toy, and there was actually a bit of a nostalgic flashback to the real Beetle I had in my youth. A convertible New Beetle would be even more fun.
I suspect that there’s also quite a different image projected by the New Beetle vs. a Golf that is similar to something a car magazine said years ago about the original Beetle. Image is the last thing on earth I care about, but I found the comment interesting. They said (in reference to the original Beetle) that it was uniquely class-neutral, that someone who wouldn’t be caught dead driving to the fancy country club in a low-end Ford would think nothing of doing so in a Beetle. I think it’s somewhat the same with the New Beetle. A Golf makes a typical automotive image and class statement. A New Beetle just says “slightly eccentric fun toy”.
One could also say that the cumulative incremental design changes over the years made the later generations of original Beetle very different from the first 1937 model. All those subtle changes (and some not so subtle, like major changes in the windows) add up to quite a different look. I suspect that the idea for the New Beetle concept car was the question, what would the original Beetle look like today if it had continued its design evolution and become modernized in line with today’s car designs. I think they did a great job of imagineering that idea.
I had a 68 Beetle (1.6? 1.3? I don’t remember) that I bought in Augusta, Georgia, in 1990 or so, and drove back to Michigan after AIT. I removed the engine, dragged it to my parents’ basement, and rebuilt it, just for fun.
That was a damned fun car in 1990 or so, but the thought of driving it while keeping up with modern traffic speeds on the freeway would scare the hell out of me. I mean, at 60 mph it would almost go airborne. How the hell would I push it to 85 mph safely?
Still, if I had the space, I’d love to get something similar: a Karmann Ghia, and restore it completely.
I never owned one myself, but I learned to drive a stick on my brother’s beetle…it was a mid-to-late 70’s model with one interesting quirk; it would stall pretty much immediately if you took your foot off the gas. So I learned to drive a manual transmission and to do left-foot braking at the same time!
My first car (in 1983) was a 1958 Beetle. Brilliant little go-er, with nothing on the dash except a speedo. It had a ‘switch’ on the floor next to the clutch that you would turn on when you ran out of petrol, so a manual reserve tank: no need for a petrol gauge.
Then I had two Type 3’s (station wagons) followed by a Kombi with a pop top roof.
And I really wish I’d never gotten rid of any of those cars because it’s unlikely I could ever afford to buy another one.
Mine was a '62. I traded a '58 Jaguar for it, the Jag wasn’t that bad, I just wanted a smaller car. I think '62 was the first model with large tail lights and rear window. Blaupunkt radio, AM/LW (!). No fuel gauge, but a switch to reserve gallon if you run out, which I did once. Heater but no blower. Battery under the back seat cushion. Very reliable car, my mechanic was a German WWII vet. I drove it from Montreal to El Salvador, Central America. Great in snow, I had Pirelli snow tires on it. Got rear ended and totaled.
Yes, in December, 1973, I drove that '72 Super Beetle from Norfolk, to South Hill (south-central Virginia), down through the Carolinas, and finally got ahead of the snow just northeast of Atlanta. I also had a gallon of duty-free and untaxed liquor in my forward trunk, and got it all delivered here in North Alabama. (We could do that kind of thing then, and I’ve never heard of anyone going to jail on account of it.)
I’d guess that makes me some kind of hillbilly. Okay.
A college friend had one, and when he gave me a ride in it I was surprised at how close my nose was to the front windshield. I didn’t feel safe in it.
But then I grew up driving a microbus, and there’s almost nothing in front of your knees in those front seats. Those things (old beetles and microbuses) were frail tin cans. God help you if you were ever in an accident.
I did not swerve and hit a deer. But to be fair it was the deer’s fault. It was all nice and safe on the shoulder of the road and could have jump away into a field and stayed alive. But it paniced and jumped into the street and I hit it right as it landed. We had seen it and I had slowed to 25. But the deer was hurt really bad. It wasn’t a big deer. And when I got out to check on it it propped up it’s head and looked at us. Still haunts me.
So it did not come alive like Johnny 5? That is a shame.
Oh, also if I ever get rich I wanna buy two old bugs. Fix one back to straight factory specs. And the other give it all of the modern amenities, and zip up the horsepower, and spice it up, my style. Like lots of extra buttons and switches that don’t really do anything but look cool and googly eyes and paint it super awesome.
For extra money my grandpa would buy old bugs and fix them up and resell them. It was kind of his hobby. When My brother was 16 and I was 15 we went to his house and he let us pick out one for ourselves for our first car. He had 7 seven all done and ready to go that we could choose from. Thankfully my brother and I wanted completely different ones.
I’ll always have a soft spot for them. Especially when one looks like it has been restored back to factory. At this place I used to work at had one that was restored back to factory, as far as I could tell. It just looked like it had rolled off the line. And as I walked past it in the parking lot I would always slow down and take a gander inside. I never got to talk to the owner about it.
I grew up loving VWs – Beetles, Mircobuses, and even Karmann Ghias. When I was 14 (1979), my father bought an early '70s Beetle from a friend of his, with the intent that it would be my car when I turned 16 – so, I consider that to have been “my car.” But, it turned out that it was in need of a lot of repairs, and we sold it again.
I still love the look of the Bug, and admire its simplicity and ingenuity, but I also recognize that it (like most cars from that era, particularly small cars) was lacking from a safety standpoint.
I considered buying a New Beetle about 15 years ago, but concluded that it was just too small for my needs.
A friend of mine owned several of the earlier version; in various states of repair.
He usually had two or three going at any one time, but we’d always be ready for on-road repairs. The old bug is quite simple mechanically, so not a bad car for adventurous 18 year olds to use.
The one memorable time: I had bought my then-girlfriend some underwear, including a thong style panty. For me that was the height of romance, possibly less so for her.
Anyway, at some point we were cruising around in the bug when the fan-belt snapped, and we made field-repairs with that same thong, which got us safely back home.
Since then, I have only ever bought delicate ‘delicates’ for my girlfriends.
I never owned one, but we had a couple when I was younger after I got my driving license.
The first was a yellow '71 Beetle with the “semi-automatic” transmission, which I suppose was the predecessor of the modern paddle shifters; three-speed transmission that had to be manually moved between gears but didn’t have a clutch pedal. It stalled on me just as I was about to enter the most dangerous, treacherous “intersection” in our neighborhood one day, and would not start again. In my frustration I lashed my hand out and cracked the windshield. My mother thought this was absolutely hilarious, as I was just about the wimpiest kid you could ever want to meet. Turns out that the bolts holding the starter motor in position had rusted through and the motor was not connected to anything, which is why it wouldn’t re-start. :-/
Later, Dad bought a '74 Super Beetle with a manual transmission, on which car I learned to drive a stick. It’s why I’ve spent the last 30 years breaking a lot of bad habits.
I had several VWs and learned a lot about automobile maintenance by working in them, because you were always working on them. You could split the engine block right down the middle, change the crankshaft, bearings, pistons, etc. and rebuild the entire engine using only the basic tools in your average tool kit. Some extras tools. Not much more complicated than a lawn mower.
I built a 1830cc or so engine with dual Dellorto carburetors, man what a seriously fast beast that car was. I also had a '65 turned into a Baja style with large, meaty truck tires on the rear. That thing would almost climb trees. I was up playing in the snow in the local hills once and I met a Toyota 4x4 coming down the logging road, deep ruts and snow on both sides. If he had tried to make room for me to get buy he would have certainly got stuck. I held up my hand to signal “just a minute” and I plowed right off the side of the road, up a bank, and stopped next to a stump, only the top of the car remained above the snow. I rolled down the window and he asked “do you need help getting out of there?” I said no, and after he went by I backed right back onto the road and continues up. Of course, it was cold as hell and no defrost, windows freezing up on the inside, it was still fun.
After too many years, too much time and money spent I gave away my last VW part and told my family that if I ever bought a VW again I needed an intervention.
I had a '71 Super Beetle with a flat windshield. The front suspension and trunk, really everything forward of the dashboard were different from the regular bug. The Super had McPherson struts and the regular had torsion bars. The Super was also longer.
Anyway, I had a '66 as well. Fun cars to drive and decent on gas mileage, but the '66 was rusted everywhere possible to make the heater not work. Definitely fair-weather cars, those.
When I met the SO she drove a new Beetle. I hated it. I’m sure there are worse cars, but every design feature seemed to err on the side of looking funky at the expense of functionality. Reliability was not great either.
In my life, I have been ‘reach out and touch’ close to 6 car fires. 3 were VWs, 2 bugs and a bus (I put the bus fire out). Of the fires I’ve admired from afar, 2 were bugs, and one may have had the driver still inside, and worse for the wear.
I will not put myself or anything I love in a VW. Just sayin’.
But, it turned out that it was in need of a lot of repairs, and we sold it again.