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Have you ever owned a VW Beetle?

Did you ever own a VW Beetle?

  • Yep, sure did.

    Votes: 199 73.7%
  • Nope

    Votes: 44 16.3%
  • I've got a New Beetle does that count?

    Votes: 7 2.6%
  • I had some other kind of aircooled boxer motor like a Porsche or a Bus

    Votes: 20 7.4%

  • Total voters
    270
My first car with a '74 Superbeetle. Great car. I bought it from some guy for $200. I drove it for three years without a lick of trouble until one day the transmission spun into pieces. I literally left it on the side of the road.
 
I've had a few:
74 Sun Bug (first car)
71 Super beetle (bought in Seattle and drove to Ohio)
81 & 83 AC Vanagons (Awsome)
74 412 wagon
75 Superbeetle (recent purchase)

My wife's current daily driver is an 87 Scirocco 16v.
 
Me too...First car I owned was a 72 that I unfortunately totaled!!...then later had a '74 model, in addition to two VW camper vans with the pop up roofs (toured Europe).......ahhh, the memories:love
 
owned a total of 8 vw,s. had a 68 convertible that had the factory installed LEISTRITZ gas heater. made you laugh at the wisconsin winters as it would heat the car to 100 degrees in minutes. the great part is you could heat the car before starting it as the engine did not have to be running to make heat
 
long time ago

73 superbeetle
green with tan interior

I had a White '69 Karman Ghia
Blue '66 Micro Bus
Orange '73 Bug
rusted out the McPhearson Strut Towers and had a semi-automatic 3 speed transmission
 
Ford Pintos were my Beetles.

My first car was a primer-gray '72 Pinto with a rusted-out floor and that patented Ford component that heated to a certain temperature and then sprayed oil into the air filter. The speedometer pegged at 80mph, and the needle spent about as much time over there as it did at zero. A friend with a newer car and a real speedometer once followed me on I-95 at 2am and said I broke 110.

It was really the only way to avoid being rear-ended.
 
Not personally, but my mom had a '59, a 67 and a 74 Beetle

And if I had one now, I'd be rolling instead of trying to figure out which one of the countless fuel infection (you rear right...infection) components have failed rendering my high tech wonder of a car, useless. I'll sort it out...good thing I have a spare car.

Fuel and spark...real simple...you need both provided by a simple carb and a points distributor.
 
Owned:

A '67 Bug
Wife when I met her: 72 Super

Also:
71 Bus
78 Westy

Currently looking for a 21 window body, pan and drivetrain of no importance.
 
Owned a 1963 Bug back in 1968 while in Germany with my military husband at the time. Was very common to pass these babies along when it was time to rotate back to the states. Made for some fun travel on those twisty roads. I learned how to drive stick on that VW...I remember my X saying...."so when are you going to shift gears!" That blue bug survived me and was passed on to our good friend, John, who passed it on again when he rotated. I'm thinking it might still be rolling!!
 
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Bought a new '74 Super Beetle when I joined the Navy and promptly lost insurance coverage (student became insane enlistee). Let my Brother use the car. He did. I got the car back with 24k miles on it in need of brakes and whiskey dented on all 4 corners. I took a road trip to San Marcos and hit the exit fast, downshifting as I went and dropped the clutch on the gravel transistion to the frontage road. The car popped right then left the around backwards at about 50. I steered out the back window and brought it to rest in front of the Texaco. A couple of kids came out to see if I was OK and I said sure was (hiding the shake). They pointed to the restaraunt and said they all thought I was gonna buy the farm. I looked up and saw all the patrons pasted to the front window. I sheepishly got back int the car and split.
 
VW beetle

My first new car, a 1991 cherry red beetle. First one with electronic injection system, so it had a computer and all, and hydraulic valve lifters.
Pretty cool, I drove it all through collage, for about 7 years. I drove it a couple of times from Monterrey to Houston, in the winter. The heaters worked like a charm!

Luis.
 
I, too, loved the simplicity and dependability of my '72, which I bought brand new for $2100. It had a windshield washer which was run from pressure in the spare tire, which you initially pumped up to 65 PSI. A cutoff switch cut the windshield washer off when the spare got down to 36 PSI, then you had to pump it up again. Sounds ridiculous.....but it worked great!:german
 
I had a 55, 58 and 66 beetles, and a 71 camper bus.

Wish I could have held onto that 55 though. Just didn't have the room to keep it at the time.

Oh yea, a couple sand rails too, one with two dual carbs on a 2278cc vw engine. Talk about power!


They were all fun to work on. Really long story on the bus though, and it didn't end well.
 
Great stories and all familiar

Everyone who wrote into this blog must have had parrellel lives.
My Dad gave me $1800 for a car for college and I picked a brand new 1967 VW Bettle with optional AM radia and wing out rear windows. $80 worth of options.
Going to school in Gunnison, Colo. in the winter at night you had to keep the windows open to keep the inside windshield from fogging up. With good tires I could almost go anywhere in the snow. Great car then came a family and bought a VW Bus in '74 new . . . a piece of junk.

gpodzo

High School 1960 VW bug
College 1967 VW bug
Family and work 1974 VW Bus
 
In 1974 I bought a 69 Beetle. Had it painted a beautiful metallic flake blue, inside blue and gold shag carpeting laid, a top of the line 8 track tape player installed and mag wheels with over sized tires on the rear and undersized tires on the front. I was stylin' and profilin' for the day! 6 months later it was taken out by a young, very drunk lady in a Chevy Chevelle doing about 60 mph on a side street where the bug was parked.:cry I loved that bug!
 
My first VW was a '57 Beatle convertible with a 36 hp engine. It would go 80 mph downhill with a tail wind and max out at 35 mph uphill with a head wind. I had a type three notchback for a short while, purchaced at a government sale. it had been an undercover CID car. My last VW, bought new in Belgium was a 72 Camper. I traveled all over Europe and the US in that van. I still miss it:cry

Jay
 
Speaking of VW Bugs and the speed thereof, I had a customer in the store yesterday and she has a new Bug that has a turbo. She was relating that she regularly drives it over 90 mph and that her husband had the bug flying at over 107 mph recently. She didn't know his top speed as she was not with him at the time and took a "don't ask, don't tell" policy towards it.
DANG!
 
This oughta stir up a few memories. I learned SO much from working on my beetles and this book.


51763C0VTGL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg
 
I had several VW Bugs. My first was a 1962 Sea Blue/Seeblau VW Bug complete with sunroof. While the styling of most every other automobile of the era changed dramatically every year, the Bugs stayed faithful to the genius of the Ferdinand Porsche and Erwin Komenda designed "People's Car" -- with the remarkable Bug color palette being one of the few variables.

Sea Blue/Seeblau
L360.jpg


VW Bugs evolved over time. My 1962 Bug had several improvements that year: a boost from 36 to 40 horsepower and a fuel gauge verses a reserve petcock lever. I laugh when people complain about accuracy of their R1200RT fuel gauge.

My father was a WWII fighter pilot in the Pacific. He loved the sound of the air-cooled, VW boxer engine, and would become almost wistful at its sound.

I had that Bug for over 150,000 miles. Whenever the engine need to be tweaked, a group of us who owned Bugs would get together, share tools, and work on several engines over the course of a weekend. The VW Bug served as an introduction to German engineering for many Americans. Boxers rule!

These cars were a blast to drive. Out of necessity, I once drove that '62 Bug the entire distance from Norfolk, VA to New England with a snapped clutch cable. The synchromesh transmission allowed me to shift without a clutch while underway. When I had to stop, I slipped it into neutral. To resume from a stop, I shut off the engine, slipped it into first and then restarted the engine.

How the heck did life get so complicated????
 
My second car was a '49 VW split window beetle. It had semifores for turn signals, and a whopping 30 hp motor that would get into 3rd going downhill with a tailwind.

I have regretted many times that I don't still have it. I didn't realize at the time ('69) how rare it was; I think it was the first year that the VW was imported into the US.

Coulda shoulda woulda

Charles Lindbergh, the aviator, lived in my hometown in the '60s. He had that exact year VW. Obviously, he could have owned and driven any automobile -- he loved his Bugs and continued to own them through the years.

He is a link to a historical site and one of Lindbergh's later Bugs. http://www.mnhs.org/preserve/conservation/lindbergh_beetle.html
 
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