I had a 67 Beetle as my first car and I distinctly recall its top speed being over 70 mph, maybe around 72 or so. Freeway speed limits at the time were 70 and I generally had no difficulty staying reasonably in sync with traffic (except going uphill!). I wonder if the newer ones were hampered by emissions stuff or different gear ratios.
Memories can become distorted over time but I seem to recall my Beetle being pretty darned reliable. In fact Beetles were renowned for quality of construction compared to some of the domestic crap that was being produced at the time. Comparing them with modern cars isn’t really a fair comparison.
One of the issues with air cooling, exacerbated by the fact that the engine was so small to begin with, was the difficulty of producing enough cabin heat in winter in northern climes. For that reason, Beetles had an optional accessory called a gas heater which was literally a gadget that burned gasoline to produce heat. If that sounds unsafe, it probably was, though probably no more so than the fact that in a front-end collision the only thing between you and whatever you hit was a gas tank! Hey, we were Baby Boomers – we lived on the edge!
It’s true that emissions are a bit more of a challenge on an air-cooled engine, but that absolutely wasn’t why they stopped selling them in the US. VW Mexico had no problem at all getting the ubiquitous VW taxis to pass the stringent emissions rules passed in Mexico City in the 90’s (which were comparable to the contemporary US ones) and kept selling them for another decade.
They mostly stopped selling VW’s because sales plunged into the 70’s because the Japanese imports were vastly superior products.
Their success in the 1960s was also due to a good advertising campaign. The American car companies would make a big deal of changes in their new models. VW would show pictures of last year's and this year's model to trumpet they look the same. They appealed to people who wanted an inexpensive second car (my father) or rejected Detroit's excesses (one of teachers who preached keeping things simple).
What I remember about driving my father's Beetle 1)drive on a highway you would gets moved around by turbulence from trucks 2)constantly trying to figure out the heater controls in winter
We had a VW Microbus when I was a kid. All the power of the Beetle with the aerodynamics of a shoe box. Uphill into a headwind we would get passed by everything. Heavy crosswinds were also exciting…
Sounds like that Beetle was running rich and/or you had a lead foot. Well-tuned Beetles are 25-30 mpg cars. The 1970 Type 3 Squareback I had in high school delivered 38 mpg on road trips. Electronic fuel injection, rah rah.
It’s a testament to John Muir’s writing that that canard about cylinder #3 being the hot one still survives. VW fixed that in the 1960s, I believe. Maybe it was early 70s. In any case, the air-cooled’s Achilles Heel isn’t/wasn’t #3, it was the heads.
The heater on the VW Beetle collected hot air from around the exhaust. Drawing harder on that source would hardly contribute to cooling the engine.
Also, if you had a fan in your heater, I’m pretty sure you had an aftermarket heating unit.
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On top of that, gas consumption was really high - the amount it took to get 34 BHP moving, around 18 to 15 mpg, would nowadays be more than sufficient to run a heavy sedan.
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Well, apparently you had one with a 1200cc engine (naking 34 bhp), which I never had. My experience is limited to the larger 1500cc engine, making about 44-54 bhp.
In my experience, if you are getting less than 25mpg from a Beetle, something is horribly wrong.
Yeah, the original Beetle was designed with a cruising speed of 70, and a top speed of 72. So yes, it was designed to “cruise” at almost its maximum engine output.
This is kind of true of the Superbeetle, but on the Beetle the torsion bars of the front suspension ran between the front wheels. They were thick hard steel.
Air cooled engines are simply not suited as modern automobile engines. Mainly because they are severely limited in their output power. Today even the cheapest of cars will have all of the following:
[ul]
[li]Air conditioning[/li][li]Power steering[/li][li]Power brakes[/li][li]Power windows[/li][li]Automatic transmission[/li][/ul]
Those things alone all use up a significant amount of horsepower ‘overhead’ (old VW Beetles didn’t have any of them).
On top of that, gas consumption was really high - the amount it took to get 34 BHP moving, around 18 to 15 mpg, would nowadays be more than sufficient to run a heavy sedan.
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Well, apparently you had one with a 1200cc engine (naking 34 bhp), which I never had. My experience is limited to the larger 1500cc engine, making about 44-54 bhp.
In my experience, if you are getting less than 25mpg from a Beetle, something is horribly wrong.
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Well, over the more than 100.000 km that I drove that Beetle 1302 I had three engines and four transmissions. I always had to buy cheap used ones which were probably long past their prime. The worst engine was the weakest with 34 bhp I bought it with, the better ones were the 44 bhp. One engine, I don’t remember which, was better than 18 mpg but only slightly, and I never had the car at more than 23 mpg = 10 liters per 100 km. However, I must admit to always playing around with the carburator with the hope of getting a bit more punch.
There was no fan in the heater. Taking off excessive heat from the engine and direct it towards your ankles was the measure of choice according to the group of Beetle enthusiasts I was in contact with at that time. Since the car did not have any indicator on temperature I had to go by guessing anyhow.
Well, over the more than 100.000 km that I drove that Beetle 1302 I had three engines and four transmissions. I always had to buy cheap used ones which were probably long past their prime. The worst engine was the weakest with 34 bhp I bought it with, the better ones were the two 1300 cc - 44 bhp. The last engine, a 44 bhp, was better than 18 mpg but only slightly, and I never ever had the car at more than 23 mpg = 10 liters per 100 km. However, I must admit to always having played around with the carburator, installing a different air filter etc. with the faint hope of getting a bit more punch.
Oh god, those were horrible cars. My mother had one when I was about ten years old. It was so cheaply made you could dent a door by looking at it too hard. I always had to push-start the bloody thing in winter.
Old Porsches and Corvairs had horsepower ratings as good or better than their water-cooled counterparts. However, their rear-mounted engines made power steering and brakes an engineering challenge since the engine was so far away from the steering box and master cylinder.
I’m not sure I’d say they were better. The big advantage to air-cooling is simplicity in design and manufacture. The downside is cooling with air cannot be controlled as well nor is not nearly as efficient as water cooling. Any internal combustion engine creates most of its energy as waste heat and managing that is crucial to everything else.
And we’re long past ‘simplicity’ being a factor in terms of modern automobile engines.
Well, the last iteration of the six cylinder Corvair engine offered 140 or 180 horsepower from 164 cubic inches displacement, depending on options. Chevy’s water cooled sixes had 120 or 140 HP. Ford’s sixes were rated at 105, 120, and 155 HP.
The simplicity of design and the ease which the average novice mechanic could work on the old air cooled VW engines led to an after-market in performance parts. You can really build your own hot rod VW with parts you can put on yourself. Even today.
In the early '90s I bought a 1800cc dual port long block with over sized valves from a builder and put a remote oil cooler, centrifugal advance distributor (vs the old vacuum advance), power crank pulley, blue coil (hotter spark), custom exhaust and best of all, dual 40mm Dellorto carbs. Looked a lot like the engine in this picture:
Note: the throttle cable, flexible heater tubes, air filters and exhaust are not yet on the engine in the picture.
Man it was a beast. 70 mph top speed? No, just punch it and pass whatever you want. Of course it was a death trap in a standard '70 bug but it sure was fun!
I got a little older and wiser and sold it after the body had non-repairable issues.
The Skoda seems much more substantial.