VW BUG type 1

[Randy]

My first car was a '73 bug, in which my wife (then girlfriend) and I put over 125,000 miles touring the States (it came with 80,000 when I got it). Great car - sadly, it took a bullet for me when I was sideswiped by a distracted driver speeding down a narrow road. Now I have, as an occasional driver, a '71 Karmann Ghia - which is just so much fun to drive.

If you want to modernize your bug without losing the original look and feel, I'd say upgrade the upholstery (very easy to do yourself), and re-tie the springs in the seats while you have their skins off (also easy to do), and you might consider a trunk carpet kit as well - they really add visual appeal without breaking the bank.

I would also suggest, on the mechanical side of things, a set of stiff gas shocks and some anti-sway bars, which will improve the ride and handling noticeably, yet will be completely invisible to everyone but your mechanic.

- R

 

[scotrace]

This is my BARBIBG riding the ferry.

OhMyGosh you have a BarbiBug! lol

It's Cute as Christmas....

 

[Barbigirl]

BarbiBug

OhMyGosh you have a BarbiBug! lol

It's Cute as Christmas....

It's looking for a home and someone to love it.

 

[Mojave Jack]

I had a '66 microbus camper, just like this one, but tan and white instead of this weird green:

It had all the furniture, with the fold down bed in back, and the split windshield. The thing was great...when it was parked. Time has not erased the memories of my problems with that bus!

The thing was so slow that old ladies in K cars were shaking their fists at me to get the heck out of the way. Plus it was so light and large the slightest cross breeze sent it careening across lanes. The steering was so loose that I had to constantly swing the wheel about 10 degrees to go straight. It took me three days to find reverse when I first got it, though I should have known how far I had to throw the gearshift because of the hole cut out of the seat to make room for it.

I blew one engine, the wiring caught fire once, and I blew either the rings or the valves in the number three before I finally abandoned it in North Carolina. Someone had replaced the stock exhaust with a Porsche exhaust. Sounds great, but Porsches don't need heat exchanges, so until I replaced the exhaust I had no heat! Not that I had much after I put the heat exchange back on, but after about 30 minutes of driving the windshield had at least thawed out.

Still, lots of good memories at the beach and cruising around, and the bed in the back came in very handy on a number of occasions. But I don't ever want another one! I spent a lot more time fixing it then I spent driving it!

 

[Twitch]

As bizarre as it may seem we have Adolf Hitler to thank for the VW. It was his vision of a motorized nation that revived Dr. Porsche's lack of interest in building a "peoples' car."

Too bad that the Bug and many other simple cars have died, or been killed, due to our propensity to saddle them up with complicated "fix all" mechanical devices so we can feel good about smog, traffic or you name it.

Barbigirls Bug is completely alien to the original concept. It's got miles of wiring, sensors, CPUs, modules and other "stuff." The original needed only an experienced mechanic to listen to the thing run and diagnose the problem and approximate cost to repair. Where now the new car requires an $85 computer read out because the mechanics are nothing more than parts replacers- they "repair" nothing- and can't diagnose intuitively enough without it anyhow.

 

[dr greg]

Got the bug

I recently bought a 1989 T3 transporter, or 2gen Kombi I suppose, off an old californian surfer, because it had NO RUST, all the Japanese vans I looked at were showing rust even though some were only 5-6 years old. Echtes Deutsche Stahl, mein freund! It is a bit like driving a sewing machine, and parts are expensive, but it gets me and all my gear around with somewhere to sleep in the back, so it'll do me for now. My father had a 62 kombi and we spent lots of time on the road and camping out in it, so there's a bit of sentiment there as well.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

That is exactly why my father liked to work on and fix up old VW Bugs. He liked the fact it had a "real" motor inside. He despaired the day he opened the hood on a modern car and, as he said, "found a computer inside."

Even I could tinker with the old Bug and I am hardly a mechanical type.

I miss the simplicity of it all, the gasoline smell inside, the bumpy ride, the side windows, the put-put of that real motor....

karol