The second car I owned was a 1971 VW Super Beetle which I
bought from my neighbors the Buczko family in 1987. I have been a Bug guy
basically since birth, so the Super was really a dream come true for me. The
Super got me through my first two years on the road but was sold in 1989 to
finance a brandy new ’89 Mustang 5.0 that I talked my far-too-generous parents
into helping me purchase. The 5.0 was a joy with its romper stomper horsepower
and it led to me owning a string of three more 302-powered sons of Fairmont,
but in the back of my mind the thought of fixing up a Beetle to the spec I
could only dream of when I was 16 lingered.
The Super before the “One Day Paint and Body” $199 Corvette
Yellow paintjob:
Me and the Super at my high school Flintridge Prep:
Fast forward to 2013 where I now have two sons of Beetle
sitting in the garage in the form of an ’87 Porsche 911 Targa and an ’87 Porsche
930. Both are lovely and nearly sorted which has led to the desire to scratch
that old Beetle itch so I decided to find and restomod an old Beetle. Sacramento has an impossibly active and fun
air cooled VW community which made the decision that much easier as it will give
us a great family project to enjoy during the coming “outside” months here in
Davis.
I began my search by spending enough time on The Samba and Craigslist
that it began to border on the sort of thing that mandates an intervention of
concerned local Porsche Club members. After thinking at first that I wanted a
’58-’66 Standard Bug, I went and looked at a basket case ’65 with see-through
floorboards and a way too nice ’63 that was far too cherry to monkey with. Both
had their charm but I found the interiors way tighter than the ’71 Super I used
to have and I also was not in love with having to work around the limits of the
chassis with the swing arm rear suspension, the shorter wheelbase, and some other
foibles.
This brought me to considering ’69-’74 Standards to get the
good IRS rear suspension while still avoiding California smog laws which would
cause me no end of grief. As I dug deeper, I looked at more cars and the one
thing that kept sticking in my mind was how I was going to tune the torsion bar
front end and also adapt some other neat parts to the chassis.
After spending yet more time surfing the bytewaves and
dreaming, I stumbled upon the “German Look” which is a companion genre to such
established styles as the “Cal Look” of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.
The German Look:
As I dug deeper, I noticed that most of the cars in the
galleries online were in fact Type 1303 Super Beetles like my beloved ’71 and
that there are some pretty awesome low buck hacks you can do to make them
really handle. Porsche 944 brakes and rear suspension arms are near bolt-ins
which will get me some advantages in strength and geometry while allowing me to
run some nice wheels from the Porsche 911 side of the family. The MacStrut
front end will also easily accept trick adjustable coilover setups and there is
a pretty decent knowledge base on how to tune the cars’ handling.
So, looks like I am headed down the path to once again have
myself a really “Super” Beetle. We are going to hit the Ranch Run events this
weekend and then spend a little time at Bug-o-Rama here in Sac towards month’s
end to get some more education and fondle some fenders. Hopefully we will find our next family member
soon and get to do some swap meet diving to get “Super2” on the road to being
dialed in.
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