The Classic VW Beetle

A couple of Meyers-Manx dune buggies at the MidAmerica Motorworks Air-cooled Funfest.

The main buggy in the movie has a Subaru engine installed in the rear. The body had to be totally reshaped to accommodate the air intakes. Turn up the speakers and the sub-woofer for this video.

The next shot is from the Dune Buggy build-off. A team of people were building a dune buggy from the ground-up in less than three days. MidAmerica was helping them with parts throughout the process, as some were found to be damaged during the build.

The music adds to the excitement of the whole thing - don’t you think?

and of course, a few seconds of a really nice dune buggy mod - i love the sound that this one puts out. Loud volume works well on this one too . . .

More fun from the Aircooled VW Funfest, Day 1.

So Mrs. Beetle Fan and I were in Deadwood, South Dakota last month for some business meetings.

If you ever get a chance to get out to the Black Hills of South Dakota - you will never regret it! Deadwood has been extensively restored from the mining/gambling town that it was in the 1800’s. It is an amazing little city, and the main street at night is beautiful.

So, we are walking back to our hotel (Four Aces Hampton, the softest beds in the Black Hills - no kidding), as we just had dinner at Jake’s, Kevin Costner’s restaurant in Deadwood. We walk past the Celebrity Hotel and Casino, and saw a few costumes from Hollywood movies, and did we get a surprise! For the next hour we walked around the casino taking pictures, and yelling for each other to look at the next item we found.

The real find was Nelson’s Garage: Car and Motorcycle Museum. Here’s what we saw:

Herbie, the Love Bug. From the original 70’s Disney movie, complete with the registration made out to Disney Studios! The Beetle is in pristine condition, gleaming under the museum lighting. If you look closely, you can see that the passenger seat faces the rear of the car, along with a steering wheel in the back row for the reverse driving scenes. No CGI back then!

A couple of other really great finds:
The Ferarri from the 80’s show, Magnum P.I. I grew up really loving this car, I had a large plastic version of this - but no Magnum “action figure” to ride in it.

Evil Knievel’s jump bike. If you weren’t aware, Evil didn’t use lightweight dirt bikes they use today, this is a Harley-Davidson, upon which Evil made all his jumps. This bike is from the Wembley, England jump, well, crash . . .

The 1969 Camaro from the movie 2Fast 2 Furious. Regardless of what you may think about the movie, the car is amazing. Enough to make even the most hardened collector swoon.

Some other exhibits that are a must-see:

• A Jeep from M.A.S.H.
• James Bond’s Aston Martin from The Living Daylights
• Peter Fonda’s Harley-Davidson from Easy Rider
• Ann Margret’s Harley
• Trans-Am from Smokey and the Bandit

Make sure that the Black Hills of South Dakota are in your travel plans. It’s an amazing part of the country and there is much more to do there than one could ever imagine. Be sure to enjoy a few nights in Deadwood and check out the cars at the Celebrity Hotel!

Has anyone else heard that Volkswagen is now making a truck for 2010? However, unknown to many people, there was already a VW Truck years ago. I have proof. And here it is;

So what do you think? Would you buy it? I would. Sorry I don’t have a better picture of it, but you get the idea.

The thing about VW’s is that they are so customizable. You can make a truck out of a VW Beetle. Who knew? But why stop there?

You can do anything you want with any VW Beetle, Thing, Bus or Ghia. All you need is a little bit of know-how, a decent amount of money, and a big imagination. Here are some more customized and modified Beetles, Ghia’s, and Things.

Here is a VW Camper Bug;

A Ghia Barbecue;

A Volkswagen Beetle Limo;

And my favorite the Type 181 VW Thing Low Rider;

There is so much you can do to VW’s. If and when I get my VW Thing, I plan on making it worthy of the off road heritage it was supposed to have. Powerful engine, bigger off road tires, sort of like a Hummer. But a VW Hummer.

Have you done any customizing unlike anyone else? Leave a comment and show us your pictures.

I know, the ‘Bug-erceptor”? It’s bad, but that’s what they’re calling it.

This Beetle, seized in a DUI, has been transformed into a Police Cruiser. But don’t let the name, “Bug-erceptor” fool you. It’s not an interceptor. You won’t be getting pulled over by this cop car unless you’re on a bicycle. At a top speed of 70 MPH, this Bug will be seeing action only in parades and schools.

In case you are wondering, the number on this police car is 53.

Just a beautiful job of driving in this drift video.

Nice to see a Classic Beetle showing the kids how it’s done . . .

Team-BHP is a car restoration forum in India, and one of the members posted his story about this amazing restoration, which was done in 18 months. The end result was the owner forming the Bangalor Beetle Club.

Found via Team-BHP.com

It’s images like this that make me wonder “what could have been?” I wonder if anyone has ever compiled a list of the type of automobiles that have been left to nature. I’ll bet that air-cooled VW’s have to be near the top of the list.

From South Florida Daily

One of the award-winning vehicles at the Funfest was this awesome Safari Thing:

Check out all of the accessories that have been added and restored:

Dual external Air filters

Entrentching tool

Headlamps, top-side spare, and water bag

This orange Thing had the original woodwork, which was all stripped and hand-restored.

The Mid America Motorworks VW Funfest was held June 2-3, 2007. The theme of this year’s event was the 50th anniversary of the Oval Window Beetle’s.

The pictures here are from the large turn-out of oval window VW’s. Many were completely restored and beautifully done with custom interiors and engine modifications.

A beautiful two-tone restoration of a 50’s Beetle.

Convertable oval window.

I loved this two-tone style.

This was one of my favorites. Restored by Tim Hall, it is a 1955 restored oval window. I love the rear wheel covers and the bright red paint.

Another restoration by Tim Hall, this one was still in primer. However, it is a 1947 beetle. there is a hand-crank in the rear of the car to start the engine. It had a very sparse interior, but beautiful for the history.

Another one of my favorites. I guess there is something about a bright red VW Beetle that just grabs your attention. This engine was immaculate and covered in red and chrome.

The interior was just as amazing as the engine. The custom red and white interior just popped and made everything clean and well-organized.

Another nice Beetle interior. The exterior was a seafoam color with a red interior - interesting color choice, but it seems to work on these cars.

This was a fun find. An original Firestone “Car Cooler.” So they DID have air conditioning, eh?

Coming up in the next post - VW Campers and Buses