Looking for a Project Car! Aircooled VW Bug!

 So, the red 1976 914 I posted about last week, which was for sale locally for $3k, has sold. There is one other 914 project for sale, but its a bucket of parts and a bare shell that was acid dipped and then left to corrode. So, I am continuing this "Looking for a Project Car" idea with a follow up post about another aircooled car, the VW Beetle or Bug. 

In Brazil they are called a "Fusca" which is the Portuguese word for "beetle". One thing I'm noticing, is a theme with where my mind goes when I think of getting a project car, which is that I get very nostalgic. You can't get much more nostalgic than to go back to where it all began for me and my first car, this 1972 VW Beetle (Standard). I say "standard" because in the 70's, VW also sold the Super Beetle, which had a different front suspension and (McPherson strut style) slightly different body panels (vented lower nose and rounded windshield) that help tell them apart.

Let me give a brief review of how I got into Bugs in the first place. My dad wasn't into Bugs at all. But, he did have that 914, which uses a VW Type 4 engine. I got some exposure to the aircooled Vdub world through my short stint at Mark Stephens High Performance as noted before. While those 2 things may have been a minor factor, the key factors that got me hooked were 2 things. First, a kid a year older than me in school, who I knew from Church, Steve Keene, had a 2-tone black and white 1967 (again, this is memory I'm relying on) VW Bug that was lowered, nice exhaust and it sat on really cool polished Centerline wheels (like in this photo below).

Steve worked at "Great Wall" Chinese restaurant in town. He was the link for me getting a job there as a delivery and take out kid. I remember getting a ride in Steve's bug once or twice. I can still picture that experience. The car was really nice inside and out. It was low and it was loud. I also recall getting a ride in his dad's split window early Bug. It was primer grey or some kind of light color like that. I remember sitting up front. If you have ever ridden in an old VW bus, its a unique experience. With that flat nose, you sit up high and very far forward. The steering wheel is like a big school bus steering wheel and its very horizontal. There is nothing like it. 

The second factor, which I'm guessing came after this initial experience with the Keene's bug and bus is reading and buying VW Trends and Hot VW's car magazines at the local grocery store (Save Mart in Tehachapi). I got seriously hooked on the feature cars and how-to tech articles and cool wheels and parts that were advertised in these mags. The first car I can remember really wanting to buy as my first car was the Type 3 Squareback. I don't really know why, except to say I thought they looked really cool, especially slammed with some cool Porsche Fuchs wheels or maybe some steelies, hub caps and white walls. Here's a couple of cool examples I found on the internet. 

What's funny is that performance wasn't a big part of my enjoyment of these Vdubs. It was stance and old car interiors and simple mechanicals and customization. There is a part of the aircooled car world that is into drag racing and I was interested in that aspect too. I liked the idea of having a bug that could pop a wheelie at the drag strip. haha

In small town Tehachapi in 1996 there wasn't any Squarebacks for sale. I recall going to see one that wasn't running, but I guess the cost and work involved to get it running wasn't appealing or possible to me. There were more bugs around than anything, so that was a natural go-to for me.

I think I actually found my bug in the paper in the Classifieds section. There was a very small ad with the year/make/model, the price and a phone number. 

Sorry for the picture of a picture here. This was the night I bought and brought home my 72 Bug. A quick Google search says this color code was "54D Marina Blue". I bought it for $600 from a family friend, Steve Guenther, who lived in Stallion Springs. I don't know if I knew it was Steve's car that we were going to see when we called and arranged it. I can't remember. I had just been hired to work at Scott Bomar Machine in Tehachapi, California about 2 weeks after I graduated from High School. So, I had a job to get to and some income. I was waiting to turn 19 to serve a mission for the Church and was trying to make some money. I still have a memory of going to look at it and test drive it. I remember my dad drove it and when he stomped on the brakes to feel them out, it swerved hard to the right. He said something like "welp, the brakes need to be adjusted". LOL You can see the sign in the window that says "$750". I had the money and my dad helped me figure out what to offer. Steve took the offer and we drove it home! This picture was after we had returned home and I was showing it to my siblings. That's almost 12 year old Lexy posing with me.

Here's some additional photos below showing how my dad and I repaired the huge dent in the passenger side door and rear side panel.

My dad was able to get a lot of the dent straightened out. He also attempted to heat and cool the metal to get it to shrink up a little. You can see it took a lot of bondo to do the rest. Yikes! 

In this last photo, you may notice the front was lowered. We removed like 2 or 3 of the 7 or so torsion bars that are in the front beam. I love a raked bug!

I left on my Church mission for Brazil in February of 1997 and the car was used by my sister to drive around, including delivering Domino's Pizza. I wish we had a picture of it with the delivery sign they used to put on the cars. 

As the time for my mission to finish got close, my dad started asking me about what color would I want to paint it. I remember Burgundy and off white 2-tone was an idea. Its funny because I hate burgundy. I call it "Grandma Red". haha The red paints were more expensive, so we talked about other colors. I think painting it in the original Marina Blue was another option discussed. We ended up going with a Corvette Yellow. I didn't realize that my dad was actually in the process of repainting the entire car and re-doing the interior and freshening up the engine. When I arrived home in January 1999, here is what I came home to:

Dad even picked up these cool 8 spoke Empi wheels from a Vdub shop in Lancaster where he got other parts, like interior panels and headliner. Dad got the heads reworked by the same Mark Stephens High Performance shop in town and a cool exhaust. I was blown away by how cool the car looked and how good it ran! I took it up to Utah where I went to school. I had it up there for a year. I got engaged in February of 2000. I needed money and we didn't need another car, so it went up for sale. I told it to a guy and his teenage son for $4000 or so. I haven't seen the car at any shows or online on any of the local VW clubs Facebook pages. 

Here's a pick of the bug with then girlfriend Christy at the 1999 August Wasatch Vintage VW Club Car Show.

So, here we are 26 years later and looking at potentially picking up another aircooled Vdub. They are still cheap to own and fix. They're still pretty plentiful. They are simple to build and repair. They look super cool when lowered and modified. It would be a lot of fun to pick up a project Vdub and get it going for less than $8000 would be the goal. Something I could cruise around town and take to Vdub events locally. Here is one that is currently for sale an hour away for $3000. It looks to be mostly there and with a rebuilt engine that looks clean, it looks like it could be close to getting running with elbow grease.

I have a message into the seller on Facebook Marketplace, but nothing yet. What is with people who don't respond to legit interest in their cars for sale. Also I don't get the people who try selling cars with terrible pictures and essentially no information in the ad. Like, help us out with at least some basic details on what you are selling. It drives me crazy!

Here's some really cool aircooled Vdubs for inspiration! Here's a "Cal Look" raked style, a slammed white walled style and a road race style bug. Did you know Germany and Brazil had a "Bug Cup" race series for bugs? Heck ya!!!!