Old Enough To Remember?

I still own my Grandmother's 66 Beetle. last year of the 6Volt with a 1300 engine. It only has about 90K miles total on it, she bought it brand new. I learned to drive in this car when I was about 12-13 years old. She lived in a remote area of Washington State right at the Canadian border. I used to drive it on dirt and gravel county roads and logging roads. It was amazing where that old Beetle would go. It was especially good driving in the snow. My old Granny used to hunt deer well into her 80's. I have a picture of the old Beetle with a deer strapped to the hood and fender with a proud old Grandma standing next it.
In the winter she had a heated dipstick that she used to keep it warm so it would start.
Dad bought a used '64 bug with 1200 cc engine. Drove it all over back roads, dirt roads, fields....and no roads!
To deer camp thru foot of snow, and yes.....somewhere a photo of a deer draped over the rear bumper. Only time it stuck was if snow packed up under the belly and wheels had no traction. Get the shovel out!
 
My first car was a '59 Bug that cost me all of $25, back in around '69. The paint was faded off the roof and a couple of places (remember acid rain??), so me the rookie to painting used our farm spray gun to prime and paint it. Ha, didn't know then to sand the primer first, so the roof was a bit "gritty". Well, lotsa stuff I didn't know how to do back then. The paint job was done out in the barnyard, so there was some dirt specs in the paint here and there.... but hey, ran that baby for a while. Then it decided not to run smoothly, no idea why but, attempted a valve adjustment.... again, didn't really know what I was doing, so messed that up too. Not sure what the next car was, perhaps the plain jane '63 Corvair with the rusted out fenders. Fixed and painted that too and had a lot of fun with that car.
Sadly, no pictures.... we never had a decent camera back in the day. Mom had a Kodak Instamatic that she wouldn't let us play with, lol.
 
I had a white 66 VW Beetle. I lived in Spanaway, WA and went to Tacoma Community College in the north end of Tacoma. One day going home, the radio station announced a "Volkswagon" alert for the Narrows Bridge. My ears perked up! My Beetle and I could go anywhere. I immediately turned around and headed north.

As I started going across, I had the steering wheel turned 45 degrees to the left to compensate for the wind. All was well till I passed the first bridge abutment. The Beetle jumped from the right lane that I was in to the left...and back...before I could do anything! OH MY GOSH!!! I was scarred now and wondering what to do. I still had another bridge abutment to pass...and the only way home was to go through it all over again!!!

I never doubted the "Volkswagon warnings" again.

BTW...the VW Beetle was a "real" sports car. Bucket seats. Stick shift. Fast back. Just like a Porsche. :D I could chirp the tires between 1st and 2nd gear. If I remember right, first gear got you to 16 mph. Second got to 28 mph. 3rd to 47 mph. And 4th was ...well, it depended on if you were going downhill or uphill and which direction the wind was going. I think my best was 77 mph. A lot of fun. You could race that car everywhere you went and no one paid any attention, because that's what it took to keep up with the traffic.

Chris
 
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Were Volkswagen owners frugal, cheap or conniving?

When I was in my teens I worked in a couple of local gas stations, pumping gas, doing tires changes, changing oil. Guy I'd never seen before pulls in in a Volkswagen and asks what an oil change would cost. Response was that it was just the cost of the oil and oil was about a buck a quart. So the car goes on the lift, I drain the oil and the guy repeats the cost question several times and I respond again that we just charge for the oil........ So, lowered car and he says just a minute, opens the door and pulls out his own oil............ I say no problem, we'll use your oil, but there is a labour charge of $4. He wants to argue this and refer to the fact I stated that there was no labour cost, just the cost of the oil. I ask do you expect that I'm going to change your oil for free? That's not reasonable. We can use your oil for $4 or you can use our oil for $1 a can, you decide what you want me to do. In the end, he figured it was cheaper to use ours, I put it in and he left never to return. No tip BTW, good riddance.
 
In the late 60s dad’s co-worker came over to dinner in a red VW Bug Big guy. 6’, 280 ish pounds. He and the rest of his family of 8.
 
...... easy to maintain and tune ......
A little to easy maybe.
In their heyday the VW bug was used by almost every pizza place as a delivery vehicle around here. Someone I knew was a pizza delivery driver for a local restaurant when he was a teen. Another friend of his also had a bug, but the engine was having some difficulties. They arranged this all in advance. They had all of the tools and whatever they would need ready to go. Then they called in a few pizza orders at different addresses- all legitimate orders. My friend leaves taking all the orders at the same time, the restaurant owner assuming that he is delivering them all in one run. In reality he is taking them all to the same place to save time. Once there they proceed to swap the engines between the restaurant delivery VW and the friend's VW. It was done quickly enough that the restaurant owner wasn't suspicious of anything and never knew that it had happened. The friend got a much better engine for the cost of a few pizzas and the restaurant owner got stiffed and later on had to have his delivery vehicle repaired. It doesn't justify it, but the reason that this happened was because the restaurant owner treated the kids who worked for him like dirt and always found a way to stiff them somehow on how much pay he owed them. Payback is a b*&$#.
 
LOL, I still remember my parents first telephone number from the 50’s, Bellflower, LA suburb. Letter and number combo, no area code. TO-66804, TO stood for Torrey.

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