VW Beetle

The Volkswagen Beetle was really a people mover that was ahead of its time. It was reasonably priced at less than a 1,000 times your hourly wage. In 1967, I was making about $3.00 an hour and a brand new VW cost $1800. The car was really a prototype of what became an economy car that other manufacturers tried to match for cost of manufacture and operation. Not until the Japanese cars came on the market was the VW Bettle surpassed. The Beetle was also aerodynamically designed not to have a lot of drag and it weighed in at only 1800 pounds. The opposing four cylinder, air cooled, rear mounted engine started out at 34 horsepower with an oil cooler to give the engine long life. Top speed was 71 mph (115 kph) which was enough for the post-war autobahns and was far superior to the Citroen 2CV which was aimed at a low speed, poor road rural peasant market and Morris Minor that was designed for a market that had no high speed motorways.

By 1967, the VW Beetle power had increased to 54 HP and top speed was 81 mph (130 kph) although with a steep downhill and a following wind, it was easy to peg the speedometer at a 100 mph. I bought a 1967 Beetle in 1968 for $750 in North Vancouver. Imagine, a year old car for $750. It had been a delivery car for Isaac's Drug Store and every fender had a dent. The brother of a guy at work was a body man and he pounded out the dents and  painted the car for $62.00. I suppose the extra two bucks was for shop supplies. It had a radio, window washers that ran off the spare tire, a heater that diverted warmed air from the engine air flow and air conditioning was the front wing vents that could be turned to deflect the air flow on the driver and passenger.

It really was an amazing car though.  It had independent, four wheel, torsion bar suspension. It had a steering damper which only race cars had at that time. Seat belts were not mandatory or were non-existent in North American cars but the VW had them. The engine could be swapped for an engine that was made for Porche to make the beetle a high performer. If you lifted the hood, the first thing that you saw was the spare tire facing you and behind that was the gas tank. Behind the gas tank was a cargo space. The space was not huge and if you overfilled and forced the hood shut, you could put a bump into the outside surface. However, the rear seat folded flat for lots of cargo and even with the seat-back up, there was room in behind for groceries and/or kids and dogs. The handiest thing that the Beetle had was reserve gas. There was a lever to the right of the drivers right foot that could be turned, when you ran out of gas, that gave you a gallon or so of fuel that allowed you at least to find a gas station. We called them gas stations at a time when they were full service and now when they offer no service we call them service stations. Go figure.

Performance was pretty good as the car had been designed for the autobahn. It, of course, was no match for North American big iron but it also did not use the same amount of fuel. It was, though, capable of flat out operation all day long and mine was usually pedal to the metal. It made the trip up the mountain to SFU in good form and at least on one occasion was full of water melons to the residence there.

A downside to the Beetle was that it had cables to operate everything - clutch, accelerator, and heater - and these were prone to breaking or rusting up to become inoperative. I don't remember what caused me to start looking for another car but I traded that beetle for 1970 Rambler. Green. Yowser. But that's another story.  I did miss that beetle after it was gone and bought another a couple of years after.